


There's Someone On Your Shoulder

by halloa_what_is_this



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Daydreams, Lists, M/M, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock falls so bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-17
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-03-13 12:26:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3381455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halloa_what_is_this/pseuds/halloa_what_is_this
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock trips and falls head over heels in love, makes a lot of lists and stares, stares, stares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Go Walking In Your Landscape

**Author's Note:**

> I began this so long ago. So long ago… And it all started with one of my favourite films. The two lines Sherlock and Mycroft exchange in the latter’s office concerning the suprasternal notch is word for word from the film The English Patient. In order to avoid any plagiarism accusations, I’m saying it here and now for all to see: I began this fic with those two lines, and am forever grateful to the screenplay of the film that so perfectly expresses one man’s love for one of the most beautiful parts of the human body.

Beginnings are never easy. Even Sherlock Holmes knows this. It doesn’t mean he will give just anyone the chance to even try and get past the terrible start because eventually it always leads to an earth-shattering ending. They never add up to anything, beginnings with him. John Watson will be just like the others, ridiculous attempt from people who call themselves his friends (in Mycroft’s case family and Sherlock can’t argue with that no matter how much he’d like to) to try and help him find someone to live with and perhaps strike a friendship (in Mycroft’s case to spy on him and even Mycroft is not arguing against this, though he perhaps uses a slightly less controversial term).

John Watson will be brief, swift, shorter than he is himself, he will leave in a fortnight and people will start their search again, friends will worry about him being lonely, Mycroft will worry about not being able to snoop into his business.

This is what Sherlock thinks when Mike Stamford first introduces them.

And yet, two months later, John Watson is still there.

John Watson is sitting in his armchair doing a crossword puzzle, and it looks like he is actually going to finish it as an inhabitant of 221B Baker Street.

Sherlock inspects him from his spot at the kitchen table. John is sitting with his back to him so he can’t see Sherlock’s stare.

John rolls his shoulders and ruffles his hair. The vertebrae in his neck stand out when he tilts his head from side to side. If he was facing the kitchen, Sherlock could see the place he likes the most, the little hollow at the bottom of John’s throat. It would show just now, when John stretches his shoulders, his clavicles pushing up. He has just the right shirt (rare, that) so that if he’d just turn round, Sherlock could see it.

He doesn’t remember its name.

It’s shameful, that he has forgotten something so important. He must remember to check. But he forgets all the ways of collecting data when John does indeed push up from his chair, crick his neck one more time (oh, there it is, so so slightly but still), walk to the kitchen and smile at Sherlock.

Sherlock tries to look very busy when John goes to put his mug into the sink and wishes Sherlock good night. Sherlock watches his ascend from the corner of his eye.

The door closes upstairs. There is only white showing in the microscope.

He has forgotten to place a slide under the lens.

 

_John Watson, I may want to keep you._

 

 

\\\

In the very beginning, before there is Sherlock and John, there are three suicides that Sherlock is sure are murders. He reads everything about these supposed homicides, does a bit of snooping himself and of course sends the whole room full of reporters several text messages saying how wrong the Scotland Yard once again is.

But Lestrade keeps the case to himself and Sherlock gets another one, a stupider one, a very minor one that only takes a few hours at Bart’s to solve but gives him the satisfaction of being able to put his frustration into beating a corpse and picturing Anderson’s face on it. Molly, never too shocked about what he does with the corpses she provides him with, is suddenly standing next to him and chirps,

“Bad day, was it?” with a laugh. She is nervous about something uninteresting, he isn’t really paying attention.

Lifting his head from his notebook, he sees her lips shine in the sickly light.

“You weren’t wearing lipstick before.”

She’s taken off guard, stuttering.

“You were saying?” he goes back to his notebook.

She offers to get him coffee.

“Black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.”

Might as well test the paint he found on the body now that he has time.

 

Afterwards, he thinks a lot about the first time John walked in through the lab doors. Quick glance and he knows John is a doctor, army veteran, has spent time somewhere in the south, has a psychosomatic limp and an idiotic therapist. Borrowing his phone he realises John has a brother (only to find out later, the information accompanied by a sly smirk from John, that it’s actually his _sister_ who shortens her name because she hates the feminine sound of her given name) and that he (she) had a long-term relationship, got at least a phone out of it but gave it to John because after leaving his (her) wife seeing the gadget became unbearable.

He thinks about the look on John’s face after he has deduced his whole life and laid it out in the open in front of him, making him only look slightly miffed about it. Then John actually turns up at the flat the next day, shakes his hand when offered and looks like he might consider living with Sherlock.

“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleaned out ---“ John starts just when Sherlock says he already moved in.

Uncomfortable silence. John has to get used to those with Sherlock.

But (and Sherlock ponders on this a lot afterwards as well) this time he actually starts to clear the space round them. To make John more comfortable, to make him stay.

 

 

John (who has now crammed himself under the sink to see if he can fix the pipes after Sherlock has drained the latest experiment which in no case should have been thrown down there to torment the old pipes, asks for the screwdriver and Sherlock hands it to him, brain still jammed in the past when John’s feet sticking out from the cupboard weren’t part of his Sunday morning) sparked something inside him the moment he stepped in. He can’t remember feeling that kind of _comfort_ or _relaxation_ with someone from the very start. They always walk in, take a look at him and his alien face, listen to him rant about their lives because he just can’t help himself and finds it better to just get it over and done with, show them what he is actually like. And they always, _always_ walk away.

 

 

John stays. Sherlock makes an effort the next day when they meet at the flat on Baker Street by starting to clean up the place the moment John points at the mess. John sits down heavily in the ugly armchair and is instantly at home. Sherlock can breathe a little easier. Looking at John from the corner of his eye, he thinks there can’t be anything too bad seeing this man sitting in the chair reading the paper from now on. He is comfortable, he is cotton, he is vanilla, but he is sturdy and thick-skinned.

This might actually work.

At least for a while.

 

Then there is Lestrade hopping up the stairs, informing him of what he already knows, that there is now a fourth suicide victim, there is something different about this one and finally he admits Sherlock is needed. He gets the case and suddenly it’s Christmas, gifts for all, and he leaves John in Mrs Hudson’s care whilst he dashes out to do what he does best.

Then he hears John curse his leg and for some reason he comes back upstairs, thinking that at the very least this man cannot be as annoying as Anderson, and asks him to accompany him to the crime scene. He sees the pain in John but also the terrible longing for action, even violence lurking behind the sharp gaze and the protective military pose.

They burst out the door to the city Sherlock loves, especially now that it’s dark and there are less people on the streets. The incessant buzzing of the London inhabitants during the day brings nearly nothing new to his mind palace, only the annoying daily tasks people take so seriously even though they mean nothing in the end.

At night different people come out with different purposes and different goals. They think differently than the people at daytime. They might even be interesting.

The night-bus drivers are a particular favourite of his. He used to love busses. Now he favours cabs.

When he was little, he thought busses just went round the same route all day, changing the driver in the middle, but otherwise going on, round and round. He loved the city. He wanted to live on a bus so he could look out the window and see the ever-changing landscape while he did his schoolwork.

But the bus stopped and the driver told him to get off.

He didn’t know where he was.

He started to cry.

Mycroft came to pick him up. He took the bus because Mummy and Daddy were always busy working and they had the car. On their way home, Mycroft held him in his lap and told him stories about London at night, things Sherlock would not see for years and years because he was too young to go out in the dark alone. They counted the traffic lights as they went by and Sherlock fell asleep to Mycroft’s voice.

 

 

The sudden quiet in the taxi startles him back to reality. He remembers there is a John Watson sitting next to him, clearly bursting with questions.

He remembers how awkward these are, beginnings. When he has to explain to a stranger what he does and how he does it. So he lays it out in front of John, bare bone and marrow and sits back to wait for the evident glare of mixed horror and embarrassment. He has said things about John he knows people usually think are very private and disturbing when brought up and several would punch him for stating them so casually.

“That – was amazing.”

Back up.

“You think so?”

He actually said that? No piss off, or screw you, or go to hell?

None. And when he tells John what people usually say, John smiles.

It’s a kindling, a small burst of warmth that says this might actually become something.

 

He forgets it temporarily when they arrive at the crime scene.

It comes roaring back, magnified into a thousand suns that surround John and make him glow when he compliments his deductions.

Fast-forward several hours, past the woman dressed in pink lying dead in an abandoned building, a message of _Rachel_ scratched on the floor and the absence of a pink suitcase, and he finds himself on the sofa in the sitting room of Baker Street, head spinning with the case and the three nicotine patches he has glued on his arm, texting John to arrive as fast as possible.

He returns with his spine stiff as a rod and keeps glancing out of the window. Sherlock is quite certain who and what he is looking for from the road. But it’s not important. Mycroft never is, except when he is useful. Sherlock pushes him to the furthest corner in his mind palace, the one specially reserved for his big brother, and stands up to pick up the pink suitcase.

Only realising too late that its presence has most likely roused John’s suspicions of him possible being guilty of murder. So he assumes his fighting pose and snarls as he would to everyone else. John doesn’t even flinch but asks if people often assume he is the murderer.

Sherlock’s mouth spreads into a grin.

From then on it’s easy. Suddenly it is so simple to communicate with John about the case, test his abilities at deducing what is to come next and no one is more surprised than Sherlock when he pulls on his coat and invites John to follow him to Angelo’s, sit down at the table by the window and begin what could be a long evening spent waiting for a possible murderer to arrive.

It doesn’t take too long. Just long enough for John to begin a conversation Sherlock has certainly not expected.

“Girlfriend… Not really my area,” he says dreamily, eyes glued to the street outside the window.

John mumbles something while chewing his pasta and asks the question that always follows the first one. Sherlock stares at him, challenging, but John drops the subject fast, ending with a final note, like an afterthought,

“You’re unattached, like me.”

The gears grind in Sherlock’s head. He is too into the hunt at this point. Has to wait for a while for the words to register. Look of horror when he understands.

“John, you should know I consider myself to be married to my work, and while I'm flattered by your offer ---“

_I’d break you, consume you, most likely set you on fire, you’d be tormented in the end and you’d leave me broken as well, and I don’t want to be broken again._

John is shaking his head and looks about as stern as Sherlock must look uncomfortable. He is saying no, too many times, that is way too much of a single word used at one time, but he is also saying it’s all fine.

 _Fine._ It’s been so long since Sherlock has heard that word applied to him. Funnily enough, it was Mycroft who said it the last time Sherlock turned down his offer for a case. It was accompanied with a sigh, a tap of an umbrella against the heel of a leather shoe and an air of such surrender Sherlock suddenly felt sorry for his brother.

Now John says it like it’s natural for anything Sherlock does to be fine. Oh, how little he knows him.

Best to show him as soon as possible what he has signed up for. There’s a taxi stopping in front of the house across the street and the passenger is looking outside like he is expecting someone.

Sherlock glances at the cane resting against the seat next to John.

_Could work._

He grabs his coat and dashes out to the street. John follows right at his heels, without the cane, and Sherlock smirks to himself before getting hit by the on-coming traffic he has forgotten still exists now that he is in the middle of a chase.

The taxi drives away, and John breathes behind him,

“I got the cab number.”

“Good for you,” _you blessedly ordinary man, but watch this._

The map of Westminster flashes in front of his eyes, full of dead ends, traffic lights, zebra crossings, alternative routes.

A man opening the front door to his building.

Back door.

 _Stairs_.

John apologizes fleetingly as the unfortunate man is pushed out of the way, sticks close behind two flights of stairs, down an alley, spiral staircase up (“Come on, John!” Sherlock encourages), over the chimneys and to the edge of a roof.

There he stops.

“Come _on_ , John!”

It’s not the leg, because he hasn’t noticed it yet. He’s stopped because he’s afraid of heights. He has stopped to calculate the distance between this roof and the next and how far away he is from the safety of the solid ground.

“We’re losing him!”

_Jump, man!_

He jumps. Sherlock doesn’t even stop, but unconsciously indulges in the feeling of John trusting him so much already.

Another staircase, jumping to the street, opposite direction from the taxi (“No, this way, John!”), the adrenaline from the chase pumping in his veins, _is he enjoying this as much as I am?_ , round the corner, and _got him_!

“Police!” he yells, flashing the badge he stole from Lestrade a week before. “Open her up!”

Disappointment settles into his belly the minute he sees the tan and the teeth on the man looking at them owlishly. His first impression of the English is two sweaty men jumping in front of his taxi, almost being run over, flashing a badge, only to welcome him to London.

“Any problems, just let us know,” Sherlock hears John chirp to the Californian before he closes the taxi door.

The frustration of his mistake makes him snarky but he is too out of breath to say anything derisive to John and instead just tells him the truth of pickpocketing Detective Inspector Lestrade when he is being annoying.

And John does the amazing, unexpected, dazzling thing Sherlock finds beautiful the moment he hears it: he laughs.

“What?”

He is confused at this sudden sound bubbling from John’s throat, the wrinkles of laughter replacing the wrinkles of worry round his eyes.

“Nothing, just ‘Welcome to London!’” John says between chuckles.

His gaze on Sherlock, honest and open, is so relaxing that Sherlock smiles as well, finally stops to look at John, really look and think how this man, this soldier, suddenly looks so healed. He hasn’t even noticed the cane is gone yet, but it’s as if by forgetting the thing in the restaurant, he also forgot everything it represented as well. Pain, nightmares, self-discipline.

_How did he get shot? Why can’t I see it?_

It’s not important, not now, and when he runs into the darkness of the alleys and back to Baker Street with John on his heels, he feels the sense of contentment stay at the bottom of his stomach.

It’s a pity that Sherlock doesn’t hear what John has to say about his suddenly healed leg after Angelo has made his entrance and returned his cane. When Mrs Hudson hurries in the hall, almost in tears, they both forget about the miracle and run upstairs, Sherlock hoping that John notices even fleetingly how wonderful it is to _run_. The sitting room is filled with policemen and Lestrade, who sits in Sherlock’s chair like it’s a throne.

“It’s a drugs bust!” he announces cheerfully.

“Seriously?” John asks. “This guy, a junkie? Excuse me, have you met him?”

All Sherlock’s hopes of possibly hiding his past from John at least a little while longer are shattered along with Lestrade’s smug grin. Sherlock hisses in John’s ear, begging him to shut up.

“Yeah, but come on ---“ John’s face falls at Sherlock’s expression.

_You are going to leave me as well, aren’t you? You are going to walk out of the door once it is not too humiliating, once all these eyes are not on you, and I will never see you again._

“You?” John asks.

“Shut up!” Sherlock snaps. “I’m not your sniffer dog,” he snarls at Lestrade.

“No, Anderson is my sniffer dog.”

Oh, so they dragged Anderson here as well. Wonderful. And apparently didn’t even have to try very hard. Half the police force is here to inspect his flat for recreational drugs because they think he is weird and they want to torment him.

“We found Rachel,” informs Lestrade.

“Well, finally good news! Where is she?”

“She’s dead.”

“Excellent! How, when, why? There has to be a connection!”

Rachel, Jennifer Wilson’s only daughter, is dead, has been for 14 years, was never actually alive, born dead, and Sherlock can’t understand that anyone would go through such a painful experience as scratching the name of someone dead for over a decade on the floorboards with their fingernails.

“You said the victims take the poison themselves,” John pipes up. “So, maybe the murderer talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow?”

“That was years ago! Why would she still be upset?” Sherlock exclaims, throwing his hands in the air.

Oh, he has crossed a line. Everyone is quiet, Anderson is staring at him in disgust, but John’s face kills him. It’s like he has disappointed him.

“Not good?” Sherlock asks him.

John actually turns round to check the disbelieving faces of the yarders standing behind him.

“Bit not good, yeah,” he replies.

But if you were dying, Sherlock is begging at him to understand, imagine you are going to die, you know it, you have a few last moments to use, what will you say?

And John gives the most humane answer in the world: he would beg for his life.

And Sherlock in return answers with the most inhuman way possible,

“Oh, use your imagination!”

A sigh. Gathering strength to remind him of the answer.

“I don’t have to.”

_John Watson on his back in the dirty ground, already blood-soaked from someone else’s death, begging for his life, far from home and everyone who loves him._

_But he doesn’t have anyone. That’s why he’s here, with me. Because he is just as alone as I am._

That hurts Sherlock more than his own loneliness, the inability of others to understand him, his inability to understand them.

He wants to fix it, but the only thing he can say is something that everyone would expect to hear from him.

“But if you were clever, really clever…”

John’s anger face is the same as his musing face and already Sherlock is tuning in on the difference between the two. This one is definitely not John pondering on the fate of Jennifer Wilson, and Sherlock can’t bear to look at it.

Instead, he turns to Mrs Hudson who has come upstairs to tell him there is a taxi at the door he hasn’t ordered. Anger rises in him little by little, John explaining the situation to Mrs Hudson, Lestrade giving orders to people still infiltrating his kitchen, his sitting room, his life. The noises buzz around his head until he explodes and yells for everyone to shut up, Anderson especially, orders himself to think, Mrs Hudson tries to pipe in about the taxi and the moment he yells at her, something clicks into place inside his head.

 _It’s a password_.

_She made us a map._

He orders John to read out the email address from Jennifer Wilson’s suitcase, types it and R-a-c-h-e-l in with dramatic taps of the keyboard and opens a map of London with a red dot indicating the location of the missing phone Jennifer Wilson in all her cleverness planted on the murderer when he wasn’t looking.

If she wasn’t dead, Sherlock would kiss her.

The map enlarges automatically to Westminster, then Marylebone, then to 221 Baker Street. All of a sudden, the loud buzzing has moved inside Sherlock’s head. His phone chimes and while John and Lestrade are concentrated on the map trying to figure out how the phone can be in the building with them he opens a text that has just arrived, stares at the invitation to follow the shadowy man standing on the landing where Mrs Hudson has left him after she had come up to simper something about a taxi.

In a daze he takes his coat and follows the man out of the door, into his cab and across London to a schoolyard where the man pulls out a gun. Unnecessary, that, and dull, but he continues to follow. All the way upstairs to an empty classroom where they sit down and _talk_.

When the man pulls out two bottles with the pills in them, Sherlock’s mind sways between the possibility of what is likely to come and what John is doing at that moment. He has contemplated on death a fair deal in his life, always thinking he would die alone. And it seems that he will.

“I’ve heard about your past, Mister Holmes,” the cabbie says, poising the pill from his bottle upwards. “With this kind of stuff.”

Sherlock looks at him vacantly. Of course he knows. Who doesn’t?

“What does it feel like, to have an itch you can’t scratch? When you got nothing to do to feel alive? Like I do. Have you ever tried it, Mister Holmes? Killing someone? Oh, it makes you feel so alive. Better than any narcotics, I’d say.”

Sherlock opens the bottle and looks at the pill through the lamp light.

“Or are you too sentimental? Too _soft_? Unable to hurt even those who hurt you?”

The sneer is gone, and the words are spat like they are filthy.

“Not a friend in the world, no one who _cares._ How does it feel to be _weak_?” the cabbie asks. He watches as the pill make its way slowly towards Sherlock’s shaking lips. “No matter what you do, you’re still the addict ---“

A gunshot tears a hole in the air and through the cabbie’s chest right through his heart. Sherlock almost falls back in surprise and when he turns round to see who has fired, the window opposite is already empty.

 

 

Before exiting the building, Sherlock wipes the blood of the dead man colouring the bottom of his shoe to a rag one of the cleaners has left on a table before tossing it in the bin.

No reason to leave behind bloody footprints and give the Yarders more reasons to call him heartless.

Walking slowly through the now brightly lit halls towards the front exit, the awaiting ambulance and Lestrade, who looks like a proud father, he thinks of the cabbie’s last words, squeezed out of him by a patent leather shoe pressing on the fresh bullet wound.

_“I want a name!”_

_“Moriarty!”_

 

An organisation? One man, or perhaps two? Has to be more than one. A single man cannot possibly fund a serial killer. Though a single man might, a single man crazy enough to enjoy death and havoc he himself cannot cause.

Or perhaps he enjoys the power over someone so small, struggling to pay for the lives of his children, ready to die at any moment.

The paramedics throw a blanket over his shoulders, he sneers at them and snorts at Lestrade’s sigh of how they have nothing to go on. There’s always something.

And this time, there’s John.

He doesn’t need to see the powder burns on John’s fingers. He stands at ease behind the police tape, hands behind his back, eyes locking momentarily with Sherlock’s. And he knows. He must have seen Sherlock getting to the cab through a window, he ran to his rescue.

_He has known me for a day and he still thinks I’m worth saving._

He starts to babble to Lestrade, walks away, eyes glued to John, tosses the shock blanket into the nearest police car. John greets him with a soft smile and an even softer chuckle.

( _Love is a much more vicious motivator._ )

 _Oh, John Watson, you_ are _trouble._

 

 

The next morning, John comes downstairs wearing a sleep-soft cotton shirt that exposes his clavicles and Sherlock catches a glimpse of the beginning of scar tissue on the left shoulder. John’s smile is soft and mushy, just like his hair that sticks up on the front and is flat on the back.

“Tea,” John croaks, voice deep from a decent night’s sleep.

Though it’s not a question, Sherlock nods. And right you are, John takes out two mugs instead of one, instead of telling Sherlock to get his own tea.

John shuffles inside the cupboard, in search of the teabags Sherlock informs him he has stored away when he first moved his things in. They are too high for him of course, John is approximately 166 centimetres tall, 172 on tiptoe, and the highest shelf is only about 170 centimetres up, but the teabags are at the very back. Getting up without thinking, Sherlock reaches for the bags easily and hands them over.

John, still half asleep, accepts the bags, their fingers brush, and John goes to the kettle, muttering to himself about giants. The machine starts with a hum, a cough and is soon blowing out steam like an old railway engine.

“I think we need a new kettle,” comments John and places one of the mugs with a scalding hot tea in front of Sherlock, who is still standing where John left him after receiving the tea bags. John doesn’t notice how he has suddenly frozen into a block of ice and is being incinerated on the inside at the same time, doesn’t see that panic is rising fast like bile in his throat, hasn’t heard how his breath has caught in his throat. He only sees how Sherlock has not paid any attention to the mug in front of him, so he lifts Sherlock’s hand and places it on the handle.

Warmth seeps through Sherlock’s fingers and he startles out of his reverie. He looks at John walk towards the sitting room to enjoy his tea in front of the telly.

 _Average body temperature of 36.5. degrees Celsius, added with the time of approximately 5.35 seconds of holding the mug of tea, temperature 85.3 degrees Celsius (John takes milk and sugar, file away), 1.83 seconds of holding my hand (average body temperature 36.3 degrees Celsius)._ _Should_ _not induce_ _increase in body heat._

He feels like he is on fire.

He stares at John, sipping his tea, watching the morning news, scratching his hair, sensing the stare, looking at Sherlock, raising an eyebrow. In the morning light, dust dancing round and the shadows slipping from the corners to fill the dusky dips and hollows on John’s body and make them even darker. Most of them seem to gather on the one at the bottom of his throat, and Sherlock can’t tear his eyes away from it.

Warning signs blaze inside his head.

_Danger, danger, danger!_

He runs to his room.

 

 

It is an expected reaction of someone suddenly touching him. No one does that, except Mrs Hudson, andhe himself never touches anyone if he can avoid it. It is natural to be quite startled.

But John’s touch feels nothing less than electrifying, blood-boiling, wonderful.

He can’t stop thinking about it. His hand begins to shake every time John gets too close (which is about 3 feet now), and he stops breathing every time John praises him.

He finds himself staring at the spot just at the bottom of John’s throat, the hollow, the deep, the what’s-its-name between the clavicles, that he sees now only when John has that one shirt on that exposes anything under his Adam’s apple. He doesn’t wear it often, only when everything else is in the wash, and it’s the only shirt he has that actually reveals something.

John wears tight button-ups and jumpers that reach his neck enough to hide any extra skin. He is ashamed? afraid? furious? because of the scar tissue on his shoulder, and so he hides under layers of plaid and stripes and cable-knit. He only comes out wearing the old shirt (a decade old at least, must be important to him if he still chooses to wear it) when he has absolutely no choice, and though it makes Sherlock’s heart beat that much faster, he must be hiding it well for John gives him no more lifted eyebrows after the first morning.

He must hide it because otherwise John would stop wearing the shirt, and he can’t. Sherlock wants to see the dip, the thingamabob, the perfect spot to place his index finger in ---

He stops pacing. They’re at a crime scene, surrounded by the police and facing a gory sight of a body chopped to bits and placed in a triangle, perfectly clean of blood and excrements, interesting, enticing, wonderful.

And all he can think about is John’s neck, hidden behind a beige-striped shirt collar and shoulders hunched against the cold, muscles stretched to turn his head when he is speaking to Lestrade standing next to him.

_Oh, God._

 

It’s been two and a half months.

This has to stop.

 

He goes to see Mycroft, because Mycroft used to have all the answers, Mycroft used to fix everything. He can fix Sherlock, put him back on track with a snide remark.

Diogenes Club is deserted at this time of night, but Mycroft is in his office, reading documents that will destroy or salvage nations. He raises his gaze from the folder when Sherlock stumbles in without knocking, looking like a storm, red-eyed and shaking.

For a second Mycroft sees in front of him the little boy who he came to get from school, the look on his face when he heard that Mummy was once again unavailable but he was there to take him home and they could have ice cream on the way. Sherlock’s small hand instantly in his when they turned round the corner and the other boys couldn’t see.

Sherlock stands in front of him, ready to jump out of his skin, doesn’t know for the life of him how to ask for advice from his brother who he hasn’t gone to for help in over twenty years.

Mycroft crosses his hands on the table.

“How can I help you, Sherlock?”

He watches his guest’s gaze sweep from wall to wall. Suddenly he is scared to death that his brother has lapsed again, has the route to the nearest A&E mapped out ready in his head in case he goes to an anaphylactic shock, when Sherlock opens his mouth,

“The Gibran case. That still on?”

_Not a single verb in those two sentences. Six words in all._

“Yes, we _are_ still on it, but we are making quite adequate progress.”

“I’ll take it.”

Mycroft raises both eyebrows.

“You – want to take the case? After three months of giving me the stern and all in all vulgar answer which in its simplicity goes ‘no’?”

Sherlock nods. There are two deep red patches on his cheeks.

Mycroft sighs and starts to gather his papers together.

“Sherlock, I don’t know what you have been getting into this time” (he doesn’t say ‘taken’, dares not to even think of the word) “but I suggest you go home and have a good night’s sleep.”

He sweeps past Sherlock in a slide of patent leather shoes and a whiff of a shiny new briefcase. He is at the door when a breathless voice says his name.

“That place at the base of a person’s throat. The hollow. Does it have an official name?”

Mycroft turns, stares at his brother. He is silent for a few seconds as he takes in his appearance once more. Sherlock can see the light when it finally blinks on above his head, the only confirmation of his own feelings that he needs, and he is ready to throw up with the emotions dwelling over.

“For God’s sake, Sherlock, pull yourself together.”

There’s the snide remark he came for and yet Sherlock doesn’t feel any better. Mycroft’s shoes clicking down the hall beat in tune with the pulse in his wrist, and when he catches a sight of his own dilated pupils in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall, he goes gasping on his knees on the Persian rug.

 

 

At four in the morning, he gets a text.

_Fossa jugularis sternalis, also known as the suprasternal notch. Your Gray’s Anatomy is on the second shelf, fourth book from the left. –M_


	2. Just Because You Feel It, Doesn't Mean It's There

There is nowhere to go now, nowhere to hide. Sherlock must return home at intervals or raise the suspicions of both Mrs Hudson and John as well as answer a lot of questions. So he puts on a face, goes home and talks to John as if everything is fine and normal.

He must be faking it extremely well, for John does not say a word, does not even look at him weirdly but lives on like he hasn’t killed a man for Sherlock, flirts with cashiers at Tesco’s and with dog walkers in Regent’s Park.

He likes to flirt, Sherlock notices. A lot.

And he likes to date.

Suddenly, Sherlock has an excuse to stay out of the flat and spend excessive amounts of time at the Yard tormenting Lestrade or at Bart’s tormenting Molly.

That’s what Lestrade calls it. Molly stays silent mostly and brings him tea when asked.

On an afternoon, Sherlock comes home after a night and day spent away because of a date John brought home and who wouldn’t loosen the hold of her mouth on John’s the whole time Sherlock sat at the kitchen table. Now the kitchen is empty of women, only John is there, rummaging around, making something that could be pulau rice but lacks the telltale cashew nuts.

“I’m just looking for them, I bought a bag and I know I put it in the cupboard,” John informs him.

“Ah, they were in the way of my pickled eggs so I moved them to the upper shelf.”

John opens the last cupboard and jumps back like the jars of pickled goods have shouted _TA-DAH!_ to his face.

“Sherlock, why the hell do you need a million jars of pickled eggs! No one is weird enough to like them so much.”

“There’s only 42 jars, not a million. And I need them for an experiment. The nuts are on the upper shelf.”

John stretches on tiptoe and his jumper hikes up slightly.

Oh, Sherlock is going to use this trick to his advantage again later. He is going to shrink all of John’s shirts down two sizes, make John get stuff for him from the highest shelf and steal glances at his stomach and back.

“We could get you a stool,” he smirks.

John holds up two fingers in a rude gesture without turning and gets up on the countertop. He grabs the nuts just in time to lose his balance and fall down on the floor on his back, accompanied by an undignified _hngh_.

“John!”

Sherlock thinks fleetingly (brain tuned to a frequency that sends the warning signs blazing inside his head if he does anything that might let John realise what he is not to know) how he must sound like mother goose when she spots her youngest duckling being carried away by a fox.

John is rolling laughing on the floor. Figuratively, since he is clearly in pain and can’t move any other muscles than the ones on his face.

“I think I broke my spine.”

He keeps on giggling and gasping every time his back hits the floor too hardwhich makes him laugh even harder.

“Here,” he tosses the bag of cashews to Sherlock, “save the rice. I’ll just lie here a while more.”

 

When Mrs Hudson comes to see what the ruckus is about, she first sees Sherlock at the stove, upending a whole 500 gram bag of cashews into a pot and then John, partly hidden by the kitchen table and the chairs, screaming and laughing at him from the floor.

 

Sherlock does shrink most of John’s jumpers (by accident) and makes amends by getting stuff for him for a week. Then he realizes John has started to use the sleep-rumbled shirt because it’s the only fitting jumper he still has and, more importantly, a two sizes too small one that has to be his favourite because it fits too tight on him to be exactly comfortable. Sherlock stops helping, he stops moving altogether and John has to snap his fingers in front of his face to get him back to the present.

He goes back to his old habits, making John get stuff for him, from as high up as he can think, staring intently as John reaches for the burned light bulb, dusty shelf (“Mrs Hudson shouldn’t do all the work, John!”), important documents he has folded into aeroplanes and flung on top of the bookshelf. All the while wearing the jumper that hugs his form and barely covers his back.

In the end, John doesn’t catch him out but figures all this is one of Sherlock’s ways of making fun of him and tosses the last paper drone in Sherlock’s eye.

Blinking through the tears (it stings to have your eye attacked by a piece of folded paper) Sherlock can see that John is smiling mischievously, so he throws a pillow at him. John goes down on the armchair with an _umph_ and gets another pillow straight in his face.

The Union Jack is next to fly and Sherlock dodges just in time but is caught by John’s foot that extends in front of him, sending him crashing on the rug. John jumps astride on his back and begins to explore his sides in search of ticklish bits.

“What are you, eight?” Sherlock screams.

“You started it,” John growls.

It’s too good to be true, this chance of being close to John like this, and it is disturbed all too early by a cough from the door. John blushes, Sherlock can feel it radiating from him though he can’t see John’s face, but he does see Lestrade’s and it looks like he is enjoying himself as much as Sherlock was while he was still sprawled on the floor alone with John.

No genius needs an audience for this, so he lets John climb off of him and stand up.

There is a case, informs Lestrade (and Sherlock will murder him if it is not a good one), and off they go to see severed heads, a suitcase full of money and several dead bodies of which only half are missing their heads.

Turning to John to get his opinion on the gruesome puzzle in front of them, Sherlock is stunned to notice John is pulling his jacket tighter over himself, looking round like everyone at the crime scene suddenly has their eyes on him and that he would like to be swallowed by the dirty floor.

He is clearly uncomfortable in his jumper and zips up his jacket to hide it. When Sherlock touches his hand to get his attention, John blushes crimson.

The realisation makes Sherlock blush as well and he buries his head in the suitcase while John takes a look at the bodies.

John doesn’t mind ill-fitting clothes that reveal his scar in front of Sherlock. He doesn’t mind casual touches or even a tickle fight with him sitting astride on Sherlock’s back. He only gets embarrassed when there is someone else in the room.

They have lived together for three months and already there is such easiness on John’s part. Sherlock has to remind himself that John is used to living in army quarters where there is no space for modesty. He has to keep it realistic, has to remember that John is overprotective of his privacy in general.

_He spent the majority of our first night together convincing Angelo we were not on a date._

 

But then.

 

Back at Baker Street, John tosses his jacket over his chair and strolls round the flat like before. He turns round to look at Sherlock, is just about to say something when another pillow hits him in the face. In seconds, he is armed with the fleur-de-lis monstrosity, ready to continue the war after the abrupt interruption.

The battle ends with a kick from John’s knee hitting Sherlock’s temple and they call it a draw. Not the hollow humming inside his head or the ostrich egg sized bump that is forming on his head can take away the glee Sherlock feels as he lies on the dusty rug, hand up John’s jumper, having searched and found where the good doctor tickles, and John does not comment on the hand but lets it be.

 

 

Little by little, they form habits and work out how to live with and round each other. Sherlock learns John’s schedule which has stayed the same since his army days and is the reason why he still wakes up on an ungodly hour every single morning (even though he doesn’t have a job to go to) and trots downstairs, grumpy and in need of tea.

John still has nightmares about explosions and blood and sometimes Sherlock wakes up to his screams or to a silent thud when John falls off the bed. He never goes upstairs because it would be no use. John doesn’t like to talk of his memories, so Sherlock decides on making new ones. He goes to Lestrade every day if there are no other cases, just to get something, even a small one that will help John think of something else than bombs and bodies covered in sand and make him so exhausted he will sleep without nightmares.

John likes what he does. What _they_ do. Sherlock tries John’s boundaries but he also likes to test him in other ways, teach him how to think like him. It is necessary for the work. All it takes is an unfinished sentence, the right question hanging in the air or an encouraging nod or praise. John loves it, the danger, the running, the deductions, but he doesn’t seem to think of them as a real job. Not one that gets you food on the table, at least.

The job (or the lack thereof) becomes relevant the same afternoon Sherlock learns that John does not like him borrowing his laptop. _Stealing_ , is what John calls it every time afterwards, _confiscating_ , is Sherlock’s term.

John walks heavily up the stairs as Sherlock is reading an email from his old acquaintance from university, now an executive in a posh bank and suddenly in need of a detective. Sherlock glances towards the kitchen when John, reassuring him that he can manage, bangs his hip against the door frame and lowers the grocery bags on the table with a grunt.

The next thing he knows, he has to pull his fingers away to protect them from the lid as John closes it with a snap and snatches the laptop away. He is about to protest, but John sits down in his chair, sees the bills and sighs, so he keeps quiet, instead inspecting him from the corner of his eye.

There are a lot of bills, and such a small amount of money in John’s bank account. So by all logic he has to get a job. Which is incredibly dull.

Sherlock watches John tap his finger against the chair, bite his lip and ponder for a moment before he clears his throat and leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees.

 _He is more desperate than I thought_.

So he decides that before John can get the words out of his mouth and embarrass himself further, become awkward round Sherlock (God forbid), Sherlock decides that taking him to see his idiot of a banker acquaintance is better than any other solution at the moment.

“I need to go to the bank.”

He trusts John to follow. He is bound to now that all the excitement he has is tied to Sherlock.

 

 

Shad Sanderson is just as pompous and grand as Sherlock expected Sebastian to like as an employee. Several floors of high glass walls, money moving between continents day and night, security guard at every door. And one Sebastian Wilkes that walks into the room with his old fake smile, all perfect white teeth showing, and shakes his hand like the last time they saw each other wasn’t almost eight years previous and his parting gift wasn’t to pour a pint of lager in Sherlock’s curls.

“This is my _friend_ , John Watson,” Sherlock introduces quickly before Sebastian has had the chance to even look at the man.

“Friend?” he asks, eyes popping round.

“Colleague,” John corrects quickly.

Sebastian seems more content with this. He points them towards the chairs facing his desk and sits in his with an ease that suggests he wants them to believe he is in charge of the whole bank.

Sherlock can’t resist a few deductions, trying to show off to John more than to Sebastian, who turns to John almost immediately, like he is his ally, and explains their history.

“We hated him.”

And there it is.

Sherlock doesn’t dare to even glance into John’s direction after that but stares at his shoes instead.

“This _freak_ would know who you’d been shagging the previous night. Not that he’d know what shagging _was_.”

He smirks at John, but John doesn’t respond to the smile, only looks at Sherlock quickly and stays quiet.

Sherlock dares to raise his head and hear what they are there to do. The look of surprise on Sebastian’s face and the slight waver of his perfectly white-blinding smile when met by John’s steady silence makes something warm settle in his stomach.

But the look of disgust on John’s face as they exit the office space actually makes him trip on his feet.

“Prick,” John denounces as they walk towards the lobby.

“Yes, he is. But you did accept his cheque.”

“He is a rich prick. They can always afford to lose a few quid and I never feel bad for taking their money.”

“You laughed at his ketchup joke though.”

“No, I laughed because I could imagine how you were at uni. Because it sounded exactly like you are today, except with zits. You pick out every detail and put them together to make a story of what your uni mates did the night before. It’s fantastic.”

_Then you’re really going to like this._

He explains the message behind the graffiti, dropping hints for John to pick up as he talks, drags him into a taxi and off they drive to interview Van Coon.

Sadly, the man is already deceased.

John, huffing and puffing his frustration at Sherlock not letting him in before, walks briskly through the door and crouches over the body.

And then the next morning there is another one.

But only when an innocent young girl gets gunned down does the case become really interesting.

Sherlock eyes John pace back and forth between Detective Inspector Dimmock’s desk and the closest door, his hands clenching into fists so that his nails make indentions on his palms.

He is thinking about the war, all the civilians he must have seen shot, burned, stabbed and tortured to death. He is on the verge of a panic attack and Sherlock has to get him out of there.

He deposits John into the café at Bart’s to nurse a cup of tea while he catches Molly by the sleeve and asks ( _manipulates_ ) her to show the necessary bodies to Dimmock and himself.

At the morgue, Molly’s gloved hands open the body bags one after the other to reveal the Chinese tattoos on the heels of the two dead men, and Sherlock smirks despite himself. He goes to collect John, stopping at the door when he sees the paleness of his face, hands clenched round the cup still full of now cold tea. He is staring blankly in front of himself, lost in memories no doubt, and startles into the present when Sherlock appears by his side, tells him they’re going home.

 _Home_. Not Baker Street. He is taking John home to try his best to make him forget Soo Lin’s body and all the other ones her death has brought back into his mind.

John perks up once he is sat at the table of their sitting room, and Sherlock can breathe again. He goes straight into case mode once the officers begin to mount the stairs with grates of books, doesn’t pay much attention to anything but John’s face that thankfully doesn’t flicker into expression of pain anymore after the first two hours. After that, he gets so into the case that he barely grunts as a reply when John gets up and groans that he has to go to work.

Next thing he knows, John is back and he has a _date_.

“What?”

“Where two people who like each other go out and have fun?”

Sherlock blinks.

“That’s what I was suggesting,” he fingers the piece of brochure for the Chinese circus he picked up last night and stuffed in his pocket, thinking it would be the perfect excuse to get John to come out with him for some fresh air.

“No, it wasn’t. At least I hope not,” John chuckles.

He is suddenly very happy, all horrors of last night forgotten. His eyes are bright and his face looks smoother.

 _Fine_.

Sherlock gives him the brochure, follows him on his date and introduces himself to Sarah with a quick flash of a smile and a disinterested hello.

John is furious, and Sherlock can’t understand why.

“This is our best chance of getting a look at our killer!” he hisses into John’s ear while they are waiting for Sarah to exit the ladies.

“Fine, you do that, I’ll take Sarah out for a pint,” John hisses back and turns to go.

“I need your help!”

He sounds so desperate that John actually turns round. But his reply says he has not heard the desperation but is too blinded by his own carnal needs to even consider staying.

Luckily, the best way to hide his arousal when Sarah suddenly appears at his elbow is to walk up the stairs with a smile and join the small crowd standing awkwardly in the large room. Sherlock rolls his eyes and sneaks backstage to the dressing rooms.

 

A fight in the middle of their date, a Chinese smuggling ring kidnapping and almost killing her and John does not scare Sarah away (though the last one makes Sherlock’s heart jump into his throat). She stays in the vicinity, allows John to stay over every once in a while but always makes him sleep on the sofa or the lilo. This apparently makes them friends, because John starts to date again and so in turn Sherlock returns to the Yard and to Bart’s, stays out as much as possible and always turns round and walks out if John happens to be wearing his date shoes.

He stops touching John, stops looking at him, hunting for exposed skin, but sulks on the sofa in his dressing gown and waits for a case. When one comes, Sherlock jumps up and drags John with him from wherever he happens to be at the time. He doesn’t even pay much attention to his actions until he notices that he hasn’t seen the date shoes in weeks and that they have been eating take away for five days now.

Lately, John has only gone out for a case or to go to work and there is no change in his behaviour, in fact he seems to be happy in his adrenaline-filled life of catching bad guys and eating dim sum at one in the morning.

Sherlock smiles to himself, picks up another har gow with his chopsticks and allows John to pop an action film inside the DVD player, stuff he usually despises but is happy to suffer through now that John is content to stay home with him. John falls asleep on the sofa, stomach full of dumplings and Tsingtao, hopefully dreaming about something else than bombs going off in the desert and men dying at his feet. Sherlock pulls a blanket from the backrest and lays it over them both, allowing himself a moment of shared warmth before John wakes up and trots upstairs to his room to sleep properly before a day at the clinic.

They don’t see each other until the next evening when John comes home and goes straight upstairs to his room, emerging fifteen minutes later wearing a pressed shirt, a suit jacket and some hideous cologne.

Sherlock stares.

“What, am I that dashing?” John smirks.

He is wearing the cornflower blue shirt with white stripes. Or white shirt with cornflower blue stripes. Sherlock would very much like to count the stripes, drape his hand over John’s back and chest and stomach and sides and arms while he counts.

And he has his date shoes on.

“You look about the same as usual,” Sherlock says to the ceiling. He is lying on the sofa as always, deep in thought (Or sulk. What’s the difference when John has a date.), wearing his pyjamas because obviously no one is going to offer him any kind of case tonight.

“May I ask what the occasion is?”

“Oh, like you haven’t deduced that already!”

The voice is teasing. It’s soft. John is happy. And not because Sherlock is so smart.

“Please tell me you have something better planned than the circus,” he sighs.

“That was your idea. And no, I’m taking her to King’s first,” John is looking for his keys between the cushions of his arm chair.

Sherlock tries to look disinterested, doesn’t even mention that the keys are still on the coffee table from where John left them last night.

“Don’t wait up!” John goes to the door, winks at him, the keys dangling between his fingers.

Bile rises to Sherlock’s throat.

He would give so very much if he could just pass out right now, sleep for 14 hours and pretend none of what is going to happen ever happened.

 

Lestrade phones. This time Sherlock is ready to kiss him and pay his mortgage instead of slaughtering him and hiding the body. Everything is beautiful again. He slides into his suit and coat all at once, kisses Mrs Hudson goodbye and runs all the way to King’s.

 

Everything shatters when Sherlock bursts through the pub’s door, sees John and starts towards him. John lifts his gaze when he hears the footsteps, lips turned up into a smile which falters immediately when he sees Sherlock.

“Not again!” John throws his hands in the air.

“I need you, John.”

He is breathless from running, and the way he says it makes it sound like a general statement, applied to every aspect of his life instead of just this one where he needs John to come with him to catch a murderer.

John doesn’t seem to notice, for he only looks exasperated that Sherlock has once more invited himself on his date.

“I’m not going, Sherlock,” John gulps half of his pint down his throat, like talking to Sherlock is an emotional strain and he needs to strengthen himself with alcohol.

Which makes Sherlock feel like his heart has just dropped into the bottomest bit of his stomach.

“This is a good one, I know it. Five murders, suspected suicides, all dead from a handgun, nothing linking the victims. Better than ‘Study in Pink’!”

It’s sure to make John come with him, mentioning his passion for writing down Sherlock’s life in his blog, and even remembering the title.

But John just drains his beer and slams it on the table.

“Listen, I have a good feeling about this. I really like her and for once she has not had the chance to meet you before the third date when it’s _usually_ common to invite one’s girlfriends over to meet your flatmate. So bugger off, Sherlock. I’m having a pint with Miranda and then we are going to go see a nice movie, all without you.”

“There is nothing _usual_ or _common_ in the way we live our lives,” Sherlock hisses. “Why should it change now? Instead of waiting until the third date to invite her to ours and introduce her to your bedroom and possibly to me, why not jump ahead a little, introduce her to one half of it now, get it over and done with so she can ditch you - or vice versa if you prefer - because, let us be honest, you are only keeping up this charade of dalliance because you have a ridiculous need to feel competent as a man, not because you are looking for anything permanent.”

The look on John’s face almost goes unnoticed, but Sherlock is on a roll here and just then Miranda emerges from the ladies and Sherlock pounces at her.

She almost trips on the heel of her skirt when he crowds close to her and rakes her up and down.

“Sherlock…” John warns.

“Librarian, divorced twice, a cat (how original), already used this outfit on her date last night, with a _woman_ , struggling with her newly discovered sexuality, likes to try it with comfortable, everyday men just to see if they are any different from the gigolos she was married to, both of whom left her for someone more interesting, before deciding whether to give men another chance or switch completely to stormy lesbians.”

He turns to look at John. Instead of applauds, he gets a slap in the face from Miranda who storms away and a disgusted look from John.

”Not good, Sherlock,” he says and walks out after her.

 

 

\\\

Without bothering to investigate the very promising crime scene, Sherlock goes home and starts to write a list.

_Things that are not good:_

_\- interrupting John on his date_

_\- insulting John’s date_

_\- insulting John by telling him what a poor taste he has with dates_

He thinks a little. Better to go to the very beginning.

_\- belittling someone else’s sorrow of losing a loved one_

_\- telling Anderson he is an idiot (too often)_

_\- almost getting John (and his date) killed… on their date_

_\- wrapping sawed off arms in the day’s paper before John has had the chance to read it_

_\- waking John up at 3:08 in the morning for any other reason than a) the house is burning down or b) I or Mrs Hudson need medical assistance_

_Things that are good:_

_\- John’s smile_

_\- John’s neck_

_\- John’s typing_

_\- John complimenting me_

_\- John saving my life_

_\- John happy_

_\- John’s suprasternal notch_

\\\

John returns late, even though it is clear that having caught Miranda on the street, he has only gotten the same kind of smack on the cheek as Sherlock. He smells of lager all the way from the door to the end of the sitting room where Sherlock is sitting on the lists he has written.

He tries to look busy and deep in thought while John sways at the door without saying a word and eventually climbs up the stairs to his room.

In the morning, he has a glass of water and two aspirins waiting for him on the kitchen table and a flat free of Sherlock (who has gone to Lestrade in order to see the evidence he had not bothered to come and see the night before). He is already asleep when Sherlock returns in the early hours of the morning and collapses on his bed.

 

 

Sherlock dreams of fires. Of whole forests burning to the ground, massive floating slicks of oil covering the sea next to a wreck of a ship, just a burning match and it’s all aflame.

He dreams of incineration, crematoriums, furnaces, arsons that trap him inside buildings and burn him to dust, leaving only his teeth and bones. Only small scraps that will make sure that whoever finds him knows they’re standing on a pile of human dust.

 

Usually it’s John who finds him. Before he is lit on fire like a human torch. John steps in just before the explosion, right before the door bangs shut and is locked by an invisible hand, right before the burning trees fall on him and rain down a shower of smoking pine needles.

 

 

Sherlockdoesn’t apologise and John doesn’t expect him to. Instead he flies to Belarus to see a man about a case and to give John some space.

Before he has the chance to leave, he is picked up by one of Mycroft’s dark vehicles.

They haven’t been in touch since Mycroft’s text.

“What made you change your mind?”Sherlock asks the first thing he sits down.

Mycroft tries to look politely baffled.

“About John.”

Mycroft takes in his appearance, sees that he hasn’tslept properly but has woken up and spent the rest of the night writing something ( _why by hand?_ ), about to leave at the last minute, hasn’t packed, has only told Mrs Hudson, not John. Is irritated.

_But not because of me._

He thinks about the smile on Sherlock’s face when he first saw him together with John. Sherlock was positively glowing and he had his presumptions even back then. But couldn’t believe it of Sherlock, not his Sherlock.

Then the windswept man appears in his office, asking about body parts widely recognised as erogenous zones, and he thinks, _Dear God! He is in love with the soldier_.

“He could be the making of you. Or make you worse than ever. Either way, it can only do you good.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Mycroft brushes invisible dust off his suit as is his habit. Resting his hands on his umbrella, he leans towards his brother.

“You are too hard on yourself, Sherlock.”

The way he says his name makes Sherlock’s breath stutter. The first syllable: like _cher_ , dear, beloved, sweetheart. The second syllable: _llockk_ , dark, velvety ɫ and the prolonged kthe perfect embodiment of an old-fashioned padlock.

_The French lessons between the two of them during the late afternoons in the garden._

_The piano Mummy locked but Mycroft picked open and taught him how to play when Mummy wasn’t home._

Like Mycroft still holds him near and dear, keeps his love for him behind lock and key inside his heart.

Like what Sherlock does with his feelings towards John.


	3. Steer Away From These Rocks

He thinks about that first sound a lot later, that soft flowing _l_ , like a cross on the IPA alphabet. He wonders how it can be so different when said by two such different people. The dark velvet of his brother’s voice, full of comfort and hope, and the simmering chocolate of the slightly nasal Irish accent that makes his skin crawl.

 

 

\\\

Belarus is a disaster.

An uneducated, short-tempered man claiming the stabbing of his girlfriend to have been an accident but still describes it with fiery passion. Sherlock can see he enjoyed killing her, punishing her with the knife several times more than necessary, only because he got off on every new hit, every new squirt of blood. He doesn’t know whether to be more disgusted by the man’s lack of imagination when it comes to committing murder with a phallus symbol or his atrocious grammar.

He comes home to an empty flat, the note he nailed to the kitchen wall still in place, no sign of John. He changes into his pyjamas and lounges round the flat, his brain gnawing at him to go out, to do _something._

 

The crash is inevitable. His brain bangs against the insides of his skull, gnarling for something to chew on and Sherlock has nothing to offer it. No drugs, no case, and the only person who might be able to take his mind off it is somewhere having more fun without him and probably still won't say a word to him when he finally comes home.

So when he next sees John, it’s over the barrel of a smoking gun, accompanied by several loud shots into the smiley face he has sprayed on the wall.

Hismeagre attempts at making John praise him or at least comfort him with something like “There will be a case soon” receive no response and he is left alone, banging at the pillow angrily when John storms out of the flat, almost knocking down Mrs Hudson who comes in with the shopping bags and asks if they had a domestic.

(S)he wishes.

He walks to the window, only to see John’s receding form in the dark, clearly determined to go and seek lodgings somewhere else for the night.

In 30 seconds Sherlock is glad he has. When the windows come crashing in and he himself flies across the room, at least John is somewhere safe and sound.

 

He knows he has passed out because when he comes to, there are already sirens and flashing lights outside his window and Mrs Hudson is crying on her knees next to him. He reaches a hand out to pat her knee and her crying only amplifies when she realises Sherlock is still alive.

Mycroft walks in before the fire crew even has had time to put their gear together, takes one look at the dusty floor and pieces of glass still hanging from the window frames and sinks down in John’s chair with a heavy sigh. Sherlock does not see this. He is taking a shower, washing pieces of glass from his hair, and when he enters the sitting room one of the firemen is interviewing Mycroft and there’s a hot pot of tea in the kitchen, provided by Mrs Hudson. Mycroft sits in John’s chair like it’s a throne, Sherlock sneers at him, picks up his violin and sits down in his own chair.

It only takes about quarter of an hour after Sherlock has been left alone with his brother that they hear the front door open.Then John’s footsteps on the stairs. John’s voice on the landing, calling for him, asking if he’s all right.

_He came to see me first, came to check I was alive._

But he has been to Sarah’s.

But his neck hurts.

He slept on the lilo.

“Sofa, Sherlock, it was the sofa,” Mycroft singsongs, judgingly like big brother’s do when their baby brothers have behaved idiotically.

Sherlock looks back at John whose mouth is hanging open, sees the stiffness in his spine as well.

“Ah, yes, of course.”

John rolls his eyes and sits down on the coffee table. Mycroft gets up to hand him the folder Sherlock has already refused. He tells about the case, about government official Andrew West and a memory stick full of official missile plans, but Sherlock is not listening. Instead he inspects John from the corner of his eye, pretends to concentrate on his violin, looks at John’s mouth move and make a joke (at which he snorts and smiles).

_Has he kissed her?_

_If he had, he would not have slept on the sofa._

_Did he use his mouth for other things?_

_If he had, he would not have slept on the sofa._

 

_He would have slept in her bed, wrapped around her, his arm over her body, he likes to be protective, he likes to be noticed, he likes to be useful._

_Make him feel needed._

“Why did you lie?”

Mycroft is gone. Off to see his dentist, hopefully. His breath has begun to stink.

“You don’t have a case. That’s why the walls took a pounding. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re just trying to fume your brother up.”

Sherlock freezes at that and a light seems to go on over John’s head.

“Oh. I see. Sibling rivalry, now we’re getting somewhere.”

John doesn’t press the matter, for which Sherlock is eternally grateful, but goes back to the file. Sherlock’s phone rings and he is up, calling over his shoulder that Lestrade needs him.

_Make him feel needed._

“Coming?”

John looks surprised.

“Yeah, if you want me to.”

“Of course. I’d be lost without my blogger.”

He hopes it sounds as sincere as he means it.

 

 

\\\

Sally Donovan is not happy to see him, but she doesn’t say anything. Just gives him an ugly stare as he walks past her work station to Lestrade’s office, and turns to speak to a colleague.

“You like the funny cases, don’t you? The surprising ones?” Lestrade asks him as he walks to his desk.

‘Funny’ is nowhere near what happens after Sherlock finds out the explosion was caused by a bomb, not a gas leak, fishes the copy of the Pink Lady's pink phone from the envelope, hears the five Greenwhich pips, sees the photo and takes John and Lestrade with him back to Baker Street to visit the C flat. It’s damp and dark and dusty, just like the last time he came there, but there’s something new in the middle of the musty sitting room.

“ _Shoes…_ ” John says slowly with his pondering face on.

Sherlock edges closer, John’s hand stopping him to remind that the person who left them there has already blown up the building across the street. Moving even slower, he crouches on the floor, almost falls down,startledby the sudden sound of the pink phone ringing in his pocket.

NUMBER BLOCKED.

“Hello?”

Then the fun really stops.

“ _Hello… sexy… I’ve… sent you… a little puzzle… just to say ‘hi’…_ ”

“The curtain rises,” he says quietly to himself.

This is what he has been waiting for, anxiously even.

But John doesn’t sound too happy to hear that. True, Sherlock’s been waiting for something interesting to happen, but his wish didn’t include bombs strapped on innocent people.

John's expression stays stony as he stares out of the cab window on their way to Bart’s. He is thinking about the woman strapped to the bomb, about the 12 hours left to save her, about what happens if they don’t make it in time. Sherlock is busy fiddling with the shoes in his hand, shoved into a large evidence bag. His other hand is busy researching the web for several little details he has noticed on the shoes by now. They have already reached the lab where Molly sets Sherlock up with the necessary equipment before John opens his mouth.

“So, who do you suppose it was?”

It takes him a while to realise John has actually finally spoken.

“The woman on the phone. The crying woman.”

“Oh, she doesn’t matter. She’s just a hostage. No lead there.”

John sighs long and deep, squeezes his hands into fists and continues to pace the floor. He almost crashes into Molly, who suddenly bursts into the room, and then into someone else who follows close at her heels. It’s almost comical, the way the closing door first hits the man in the face and how he then almost falls over when he trips and crashes into John.

“Sorry, mate.”

“Jim!” Molly chirps. “Come in.”

She doesn’t spare a glance at John, but turns to Sherlock crouching over his microscope, looking confused.

“Jim, this is Sherlock Holmes,” Molly says breathlessly.

‘Jim’ puts his arm around her waist and smiles.

“And…” Molly continues when John hovers into view, rubbing his jaw. “Sorry…”

“John Watson, hi,” John sighs and nods at Jim.

Jim’s eyes barely look his way but they go bottomless for a moment before flicking back to Sherlock. He moves closer, almost touching him as he hovers behind his back.

“Molly has told me so much about you. You working on one of your cases?”

He leans casually against the table, making a metal dish clang to the floor.

“Sorry!” he grabs it, hiding a slip of paper under it before he places it back on the table.

Sherlock stares at it incredulously while Jim continues to blabber.

“Well, I better be off,” he rubs his arm.

He kisses Molly goodbye. She smiles shyly and blushes, but looks pleased.

“It was nice meeting you,” Jim tries, looking at Sherlock hopefully.

“You too,” John replies when the silence stretches to uncomfortable.

Jim looks directly at him this time, that bottomless expression flashing in his eyes again, and is gone.

“You could have been a bit more polite,” Molly says quietly.

“Better end things with him quick as you can, Molly, before you walk in on him with one of his boyfriends,” Sherlock turns back to his microscope. “Will save you a lot of heartbreak.”

“What?” Molly whispers.

“Oh, come on,” he says, looking at them both.

Molly looks like she is about to burst into tears, cheeks red with embarrassment. John’s face is crimson too, only with anger. He looks like he will explode.

“Sherlock…” he tries.

“You _must_ have seen it! With that level of grooming I’m surprised he doesn’t just tattoo ‘gay’ on his forehead.”

“Sherlock…”

“He’s been out clubbing all night, in a _gay_ bar, as can be seen from the stamp on his left hand. For goodness’ sake, no need for tattoos when you have the name of the most notorious gay club in town stamped on your palm. His eyelashes were tinted, his eyebrows have been plucked, there are signs of taurine cream around the frown lines. And of course his underwear. Visible above the waistline. Very particular brand.”

“With that logic, every chav is gay,” John points out.

“As I said, particular brand.”

He dishes the slip of paper from its hiding place.

“Plus the suggestive fact that he left his number under this dish.”

Molly stares at the paper for a second, then marches out with her face suddenly very pale.

Sherlock looks confused while John’s red puffiness has melted into one of his stoic white-as-marble expressions of sarcastic,

“Charming. Well done.”

Sherlock tries to understand what he has just done.

“I was saving her the trouble. Isn’t that kinder?” he swivels around in his chair to look at John, who stares incredulously back in turn.

“Kind? No, Sherlock, _that_ wasn’t kind.”

_Oh, who cares!_

Sherlock pushes one of the shoes towards John.

“Go on then,” he encourages.

“Huh?”

“You know what I do. Off you go.”

 _Test him_ _._

John huffs out a laugh and looks at his watch, checking how much time they have left.

“No.”

“Go on,” Sherlock encourages again.

John backs up several paces, his jaw set and his hands that just a moment ago were crossed over his chest now back to clenching into fists by his sides.

“I’m not just going to stand here so you can humiliate me while I’m trying to… dissemble…”

_Make him feel needed._

“An outside eye, a second opinion, it’s very useful to me.”

“Yeah, right. Why don’t you just use your skull then?”

“It can’t talk. And besides it doesn’t have eyeballs.”

A joke to lighten the mood. And it helps. John finally looks him in the eye. For a moment, Sherlock wonders if he will be reduced to saying ‘please’, but then John sighs and takes up the offered shoe.

Sherlock smiles to himself.

Of course, John gets it all wrong but no matter. His presence, having someone to say things to out loud helps Sherlock figure out who the shoes must belong to.

“Carl Powers.”

“Who?” John asks.

“It’s where I began.”

_6 hours left_

 

 

\\\

They go home and Sherlock gathers everything he still has on Carl Powers on the kitchen table.

 _1989, young kid, champion swimmer, came from Brighton for a school sports tournament, drowned in the pool. Tragic accident. No one thought anything_ _of_ _the fact that his shoes were missing from his locker, his shoes that he loved and never left anywhere._

“And now they’ve turned up,” Sherlock whispers to himself and strokes the trainers gently.

John paces back and forth the sitting room, stopping every now and then to look at his phone, sometimes he marches to the kitchen door, but stops before he has the chance to knock or open it. When he finally gathers the courage to enter, Sherlock’s phone has gone off seven times with Mycroft’s name lighting the screen each time so now he has another good way to make John feel needed.

 

 

_5 hours left_

 

 

John spends almost two of them with Mycroft at his office, listening to him yammer about his boring case of Andrew West and stolen missile plans and wincing at his root canal problems in turn. Sherlock has time to figure out the case.

“Of course!” he slams his hands down, making Mrs Hudson jump up to high heavens, just as John enters through the door.

“Poison, John!” Sherlock exclaims excitedly. “Virtually undetectable! In his eczema cream! The poison paralysed the muscles just when he was in the water and he drowned!”

He jumps up to run to his laptop and posts a message on his website for the bomber to see.

_FOUND! Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989). Botulinim toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St._

“So the killer kept the shoes all these years?” John asks.

“Meaning…” Sherlock prompts.

_Make him feel needed._

John turns to him with a smile.

“He’s our bomber.”

The pink phone rings.

“ _Well done, you. Come… and get me._ ”

Sherlock smiles at the double-meaning behind her words. He is starting to like this.

 

 

\\\

That night, Sherlock sits at the kitchen table inspecting the strong box they found from the remains of the building across the street. Already swiped for fingerprints and having gone through all other standard NSY procedures, John does not believe there is much to find.

So he is typing at his blog across the kitchen table, the pink phone between them.

“Your blog has a far wider readership than your average London streetwalker," Sherlock notes.

“How many bombers do you think that includes?” John asks absently.

“A few,” Sherlock replies and pulls a short strand of hair from where it has been stuck to the lock on the box. Squinting at it for a moment, he snarls and tosses it over his shoulder.

“Sherlock! That’s evidence!”

“Evidence that the stupidity of the forensics team never ceases to amaze me. The hair most definitely came from Anderson’s head. He is the only one still idiotic enough to parade around without his headgear.”

He goes back to swiping the box and John returns to his blog.

After a moment of silence, John presses Enter for the last time, closes the lid of his laptop and stretches luxuriously. His left foot jerks slightly against Sherlock’s bare ankle.

“How are you dealing with this?”

John stops midway of standing up.

Sherlock peers at him from his crouch over the box, his eyes stony to cover the concern.

“Sorry?”

“The case. The bombs. How are you dealing with them? You must be familiar with them. Can’t have avoided them in Afghanistan.”

John’s expression goes icy for a moment, then back to stony indifference. But there are two extra creases around his mouth.

“I wasn’t in the bomb squad.”

“Which would make this even more disturbing for you, since you haven’t had any training on how to dismantle one.”

John stares at him for a moment, then stands up and collects his laptop. He doesn’t look at Sherlock as he makes his way to the door, but once there he stops and looks up again.

“I’ve seen people blown to bits by IEDs. I’ve had to dig into the mess to pick up anything recognisable enough to be able to tell their families that their son or daughter has actually died. I’ve lost good friends to bombs.”

He takes a breath and Sherlock wonders if what is to come will be John’s resignation from the case. It could be too much for him, this.

“But as your brother told me the first time we met, and I’m sure you’ve heard all about it afterwards, I miss the war. Whatever the hell is wrong with me actually makes me need it or something equivalent to it, and this is as close as I can get. So no, I am not worried I can’t take it. What I am worried about is whether _you_ can.”

Sherlock looks baffled.

“You’ve never seen a person been blown up, Sherlock. And I hope that you never have to.”

With that he says goodnight and climbs up the stairs to his room.

As the door upstairs clicks shut, the screen of the mobile lights up, informing him that he has one new text.

_The little doctor has gone to take a little rest?_

Without replying, he returns to the inbox where the new text has joined the 24 other ones he has received in the last thirteen hours. Each of them have made it clear that the person sending them can see everything they are doing at any given time and having swiped the flat for cameras and found nothing it has become clear that their bomber is not one of John’s everyday blog readers.

This one knows what he's doing and he is definitely not doing it alone.

The person on the other end, speaking through the mouths of his terrified victims, is not something Sherlock wants to become part of John’s nightmares. And since the brave, idiotic, _heroic_ John seems not to be at all afraid, Sherlock dearly hopes the time limit that will follow the next four pips will allow him to make sure the quiet breathing above his head stays that way. Quiet, even, _alive_.

 

 

\\\

Lestrade, with deep lines covering his forehead, briefs them about the victim the next morning at the Yard. Sally Donovan gives Sherlock an even dirtier look when they arrive this time.

“Here’s what she was reading from - a pager,” Lestrade says, placing the device on the table in front of John.

“If she deviated by one word, the sniper would set her off,” Sherlock says, pacing the room.

He can’t sit down. He knows there’s more to come.

“Or if you hadn’t solved the case,” John says, as if that had even been a possibility.

“Elegant,” Sherlock whispers.

John scoffs and shakes his head, Lestrade just looks stunned as to why anyone would do something like that.

Sherlock sighs.

“I can’t be the only person in the world who gets bored.”

“Remind me to never get angry at you again for taking your boredom out on our sitting room wall,” John mutters as he flips the pager in his fingers.

The pink phone in Sherlock’s pocket blings and a monotonic voice informs him of a new message. Four Greenwhich pips sound and a picture of an abandoned car appears.

“Four pips,” John points out, like he hasn’t yet realised this has not ended.

“First test passed, it would seem,” Sherlock points out.

“First? You mean he’s going to give you five puzzles in total? Then what?”

Sherlock shakes his head, shows the license plate to Lestrade who jumps up to make a phone call to check if the car has been reported.

No need for that really. Sally Donovan comes in, hands Sherlock a phone and another stolen voice on the other end informs him that they’re on the right track.

This one is almost too easy. There’s still three hours left on the clock when he solves it. The bomber has actually given him a clue this time.

“God with two faces. Why would you be giving me a clue?” Sherlock asks when the pink phone rings in the silence of Bart’s lab.

“ _Why does anyone do anything_ _? Because I’m bored. We were made for each other, Sherlock._ ”

“Then talk to me in your own voice,” Sherlock coos.

“ _Patience_. _The texts have to be enough for now_.”

 

 

\\\

John is looking peaky, so Sherlock makes a detour on their way back to Baker Street and stops at a café he favours for their full English.

“Feeling better?” he asks John gobbling up his scrambled eggs.

John nods gratefully. Sherlock goes back to staring at the pink phone on the table.

“Has it occurred to you that the bomber is playing a game with you? This has all been for you, starting with the shoes.”

_Ooh, clever John!_

“Yes, I know,” Sherlock smiles.

“So is it him? Moriarty?”

Sherlock shrugs.

“Perhaps.”

 _Bling_ goes the pink phone and shows them a garish picture of a garish bottle blond with her teeth showing in what she must think is a smile. Sherlock stares at the photo and John stares at him.

“You really have no idea who that is, do you?”

He gets up and goes to turn on the telly. Connie Prince’s toothy smile fills the screen and her voice bursts out from the speakers.

The phone rings.

“ _This one… is a bit… defective. Sorry. She’s blind._ ”

It’s an old woman. An old, terrified blind woman with a Semtex vest.

Sherlock feels ill.

“Why are you doing this?”

“ _I like to watch you dance_.”

Sherlock turns around instinctively, looking behind himself as if he doesn’t know better.

“ _Don’t… worry. We’ll see… each other soon enough. If… you’re a good… boy._ ”

He almost breaks the phone when he throws it on the table.

 

 

\\\

John is still following him.

He is happy about it but can’t understand why. Must be his inherent need to make sure everyone is safe.

_Make him feel needed._

Sherlock asks for his medical opinion, asks him to go interview Connie Prince’s brother, is proud of him when he comes up with his own solution to the murder, no matter how wrong he is. Elegant, but wrong.

“Let’s take a cab back to Baker Street. I’m still waiting for my lab results on Connie Prince.”

John looks annoyed and deflated but follows anyway.

He looks a lot less like an old balloon when Sherlock emerges from his room half an hour later. He is standing in the middle of the sitting room, hands in pockets, storm clouds almost visible above his head.

“Quite a lot of fun you’ve had with this one, eh?” he asks.

“Ye-es, it has been fairly interesting,” Sherlock replies.

He has no idea where this is going.

“Just another cure for boredom for you, is it?”

John puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out the pink phone. He throws it on Sherlock’s chair where it sits looking so very innocent, both of them staring at it.

“I wanted to help,” John says. “After I got the cat wrong I wanted to be of _some_ use other than running out to meet your brother about national security when you can’t be arsed to do it yourself. Other than hovering in the background when you need a sounding board or wantto see how quickly I can solve the little problems you dare to throw my way.”

_He has noticed?_

Sherlock swallows.

“I’m fine with it, I really am,” John crosses his arms. “I admire you and what you do. I wish I could be as clever and good at it as you are. For a moment I actually thought you wanted my help. I thought you actually cared about the victims, despite what you said at the lab. So I tried to help. I took the phone from your coat pocket and went through it to see if I would notice something you might have missed.”

Sherlock looks at John’s hands that are completely steady against his chest.

“Should have known it’s just a game for you. Just a bit of fun.”

Sherlock opens his mouth, expression set to deny this, to argue against it.

“You’ve been _texting_ with him, Sherlock!” John yells. “You’ve been having your own private fun with him while Lestrade and half the Yard have been trying to locate people who are scared to death with bombs strapped to their chests!”

“I never replied!” Sherlock yells. “I didn’t tell you, because it has nothing to do with the case! He gave no clues as to who he is and where he was, so what does it matter?”

“Matter? It matters, Sherlock, because when you don’t tell me these things, it just proves that you don’t trust me!”

They both exhale at the same time.

John’s arms drop down and his hands hover near his thighs.

“I don’t know why I’m so surprised, to be honest. I don’t know why it even matters. I never thought you trusted me, not really.”

He laughs shakily.

“What an idiot I must have been to think that you would.”

Sherlock opens his mouth again and just then the phone on his chair lights up with a new message.

They both look at it at the same time, then back to each other before they both scrabble to grab it. Sherlock beats John to it, snatches up the phone and reads the text.

_Awh, is the little doctor in a bit of a huff?_

“What does it say?”

Sherlock looks up at him quickly, swiping his eyes over him and behind him to look through the window.

The curtains aren’t drawn.

“Sherlock, what does it say?” John barks out.

Sherlock’s own phone begins to ring. Clutching the pink phone in his left hand, he takes his phone from his breast pocket and replies.

“My lab results are ready,” he tells John.“I was right. I know who killed Connie Prince.”

 

 

\\\

It’s another case of poisoning. Quite boring actually, the bomber repeating himself.

John does not look bored, however.

“Hey, Sherlock, how long have you known?” he says, grabbing Sherlock by the sleeve as Lestrade disappears to his office before them.

“Well, this one was quite simple,” Sherlock says proudly. “And the bomber repeated himself.”

“No, but Sherlock, the hostage, the old woman, she’s been there all this time!”

“And he gave me 12 hours. I solved the case quickly and that gave me time to get on with other things. We’re one up on him!” he marches to Lestrade’s office.

He doesn’t feel as victorious ten minutes later. The answer to the puzzle posted online, the phone rings instantly, the old woman screaming for help on the other end, suddenly describing the man who dictated to her, _no don’t describe him_ _tell me nothing about him_ , the bomb going off, releasing a dead silence in its wake.

He drops the phone.

“Sherlock?” Lestrade asks. “What’s happened?”

 

 

\\\

The single good thing to come out of this is that John is watching the telly with him, actually talking to him (at least a little), as they watch the news about the events the next morning, the story completely fabricated by the right authorities.

Mycroft must have had something to do with it. He's been calling Sherlock twice every half hour now when before he only tried once every hour.

Sherlock has spent the night listening every creak coming from upstairs, waiting for the sound of nightmares.

None come but he still gets nothing done before John trots downstairs in the morning, wearing his plaited woollen jumper.

It is quite cold in the sitting room. The broken windows letting in cold breeze from outside would be enough to freeze Sherlock to the bone even without John's icy mood to accompany it.

Sherlock stares at the television screen, tapping his cheek with his finger.

_Two puzzles left._

“He’s taking his time this time,” he notes.

Wrong thing to say.

“Getting bored already?” John spits out without looking at him.

He has been glued to the television ever since he came down in the morning and has barely said two whole sentences to Sherlock.

But he has spoken, it’s a good thing. No matter how hurtful the words may be, Sherlock deserves it now. He has hurt John by not telling him everything. He never thought that if John found out about the texts he would take it as lack of trust on Sherlock’s part. He never thought John would assume Sherlock didn’t trust him.

Sherlock inspects him from the corner of his eye.

The blind trust John places in him is almost as difficult to believe as his own trust towards John. People don’t usually trust him. Lestrade finds him useful and believes in him, but Sherlock doesn’t think he trusts him. Mrs Hudson would probably trust him with her life but not with the life of her pet canary.

John’s trust is something else, something complete and thorough.

“I don’t understand though,” John says turning to him, “why do this at all? What does he have to gain from this?”

This is what Sherlock has been wanting to explain. It’s still just a thought, but an exciting one.

“He killed the old lady because she started to describe him, correct?”

John nods.

“Usually he is above it all, never has had direct contact with any of the victims. He organises everything but no one ever sees him or speaks to him directly.”

John looks disbelieving.

“What, so he makes it happen like when someone books a holiday? They call him up and he makes sure the thing gets done?”

This is why Sherlock has been so excited about his theory.

“Novel,” he breathes out.

“So why is he playing this game with you?” John asks again. “Does he want to get caught?”

Sherlock smirks.

“I think he wants to be distracted.”

John smiles as well, but there’s no warmth in it.

“I hope you’ll be very happy together,” he says and gets up from his chair.

_What?_

“Sorry, what?”

“The victims, Sherlock!” John hollers. “The people who are threatened and strapped into bombs. There are lives at stake! Do you care about any of that?”

_Why would I?_

“Will caring about them help me save them?”

John shakes his head.

“Well then, I will try and not to make that mistake in the future.”

The word rings out in the flat before John bulldozes on.

“And you find that easy, do you?” he clenches the back of his chair.

“Yes, very. Is that news to you?”

“No,” John shakes his head with a small smile, looking incredulous like heblames himself for actually believing for a moment that Sherlock had feelings.

“Don’t make people into heroes, John. Heroes don’t exist and even if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them.”

“Oh, they do exist. I met several of them in the war.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“War! It’s just a way to allow adults to play children’s games and blow up others just for the hell of it.”

John seems to freeze on the spot, not even his hands are clenching against the chair anymore. He stares at Sherlock and for the first time he looks like he might actually hit him.

“John, I didn’t mean it like that, I…”

The phone by Sherlock's elbow blings.

“Excellent!” he exhales without being able to help himself.

The text shows a picture of the South Bank of the Thames.

“Somewhere between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo,” he mutters to himself, then he remembers John and looks up.

John is still leaning against his chair but his eyes are cast down so Sherlock can’t see his expression.

“You check the papers, I’ll look online,” he says, attempting cheeriness.

When John doesn’t move, he tries a bit of nastiness. It’s what John is expecting from him at this point, might as well go with it.

“You’re angry with me so you won’t help,” he says to his phone, typing rapidly. “Not much cop this caring lark, if you can’t help innocent people just because your flatmate has disappointed you.”

That makes John move, he can hear it, and he’s sure to be punched soon. But John only walks to the sofa slowly and opens the first newspaper of the pile on the coffee table.

 

 

\\\

One dead museum security guard, one _Fantastic!_ from John, an attack by a character from a Jewish folk story and a fake Vermeer worth 30 million pounds later, Sherlock sits in Lestrade’s office at the Yard, interrogating the owner of the fake masterpiece talking about something or someone very close to what Sherlock has been describing John that morning: a criminal mastermind who arranges crimes to disappear or to take place, whatever the customer requires.

Once again, no direct contact, just whispers.

“And did those whispers have a name?” Sherlock presses.

The woman looks terrified at him, scared to death of what she is about to say.

“Moriarty.”

 

 

\\\

Waiting for the final pip to arrive in his voicemail is exhausting. They return to Baker Street to be more comfortable but the cold air breezing in between the cardboard that has been used to temporarily fix the broken windows make Sherlock feel alert and soon enough he is climbing up the walls in his frustration. John sits him down in his chair and shoves the remote control at him. In a few minutes, he is regrettingthis when Sherlock finds an inane late night talk show and begins to scream at the telly.

“No, no, _nooooo_! Of course he is not the boy’s father! Look at the turn-ups on his jeans.”

John looks over his shoulder before going back to his latest blog entry.

“Knew it was dangerous,” he notes.

Sherlock huffs, annoyed by the idiocy of the people who have found their way into his television.

“Getting you into crap telly, I mean.”

“Connie Prince’s show is nothing compared to this,” Sherlock retorts before yelling at the young couple with a five-year-old son between them,looking more than happy to be there to tell their most private of secrets on national television.

He pretends to pay no mind to John get up and inform him he is going to Sarah’s and will bring milk when he gets back.

“I’ll get it,” Sherlock offers.

John looks amazed.

“Really?” he smiles. “And maybe some beans, too?”

Sherlock hums like it’s the most delicious idea. John turns and descends the stairs.

The door closes downstairs but Sherlock is already picking up his laptop from the floor, typing up a new post on his website to invite the bomber for a rendez-vous.

_Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect._

He thinks for a moment, smirks and finishes the post.

_The Pool. Midnight._

Mycroft has a text alert on his posts but with a little bit of luck he is busy and won’t have enough time to figure out which pool ismeant.

So he won’t interrupt.

That leaves John.

He reaches for a piece of paper from the TV-stand and scribbles down a simple,

_Gone out. Back later._

John won’t question it. He’ll come home, see it and think he has gone to Bart’s or to the shops for the milk. He won’t check the website. He won’t text Mycroft.

John is safe.

 

 

\\\

Sherlock arrives to the pool fifteen minutes to midnight. Enough time to refresh his memory about the exits, the windows and how best to enter the pool area so that he is seen clearly but that the gun in his pocket is not.

Three minutes to midnight he picks the lock on the front door, steps inside, leaves his coat in one of the dressing rooms and opens the door leading to the pool area, pausing to scan the vast room before stepping in slowly.

He walks even slower on the tiles, making there are no splatters anywhere to make it difficult for him to move fast if needed.

He walks in slow circles, scanning the room and stopping near the steps leading to the water.

“Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present,” he says to the empty room, waving the memory stick with the missile plans on it. “As a thank you for yours.”

No one replies.

“This is what it’s all been for, hasn’t it? All your little puzzles, making me dance.”

He tries to sound enticing, flirty. It's what Moriarty likes.

He turns around one more time.

A door clangs open behind him.

A green, furry-hooded parka, small-statured man, light hair, gleaming eyes too far away to distinguish the colour.

But he knows it, has dreamt about it for months, even though he still can't name it.

He could recognise that shade of blue no matter how far he was, no matter how dark it got.

And it has suddenly gotten very dark indeed.

“Evening,” John says.

Sherlock can’t say anything.

“This is a turn-up, isn’t it, Sherlock?”

His voice sounds wrong. So very, very wrong.

“John…” Sherlock breathes.

_No…_

“Bet you never saw this coming,” John tries to smile a little.

Sherlock moves closer slowly, never-minding the possibly slippery tiles, feeling like his muscles have turned to putty, there’s no blood flowing in his veins, no thoughts except one going around in his head,

 _Oh no, no, no. Please, no._ _Don’t open the coat, don’t show me what’s under it._

“What,” John says slowly, taking his hands out from his coat pockets, “would you like me,” he pulls the coat open, “to make him say… next?”

_Things that are not good, things that are very, very bad: John_ _wearing an oversized parka and having his words dictated by a blood-thirsty madman_ _._

_John attached to a bomb._

_John staring down at a red dot directed at his heart._

_John’s heart stopping._

“Gottle o’ gear,” he says mechanically. “Gottle o’ gear, gottle o’ gear.”

His voice breaks on the third one, and Sherlock can’t stand it.

“Stop it,” he says to whoever is watching them, whoever is pointing that red laser against John’s chest.

“Nice touch, this,” John continues. Sherlock knows he can’t help it and yet he almost screams at him to stop. “The pool where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson, too.”

John looks down at the bomb, at the little red point hovering over his chest.

“Stop his heart.”

“Who are you?” Sherlock screams before John has the chance to finish.

Another door opens at the other end of the pool and a nasal voice calls out,

“I gave you my number.”

A pause.

“I thought you might call.”

And there it is. That dark velvet _l_ Sherlock will remember so well in the days and months to come.

The man steps forward and Sherlock sees ‘Jim’, Jim from IT, gay-Jim, Molly’s boyfriend-Jim, Jim who has strapped John into a bomb and made him repeat to his dictation and is now making a joke about whether it’s a gun in his pocket or if he’s just happy to see him.

“Both,” he says, pulling the gun out and pointing it at him.

The man stands a fair distance away, weight on his right leg, hands in his pockets, clearly enjoying every moment.

“Jim Moriarty. _Hi_.”

_Come closer, Jim, come closer. Let me blow a hole through your head._

“Jim?” the man tries. “Jim from the hospital?”

Now he sounds mockingly hurt.

“Did I really leave such a fleeting expression? Not boyfriend material? But then again, that was rather the point.”

John glances at Sherlock, the red dot still circling his heart, then back down on the floor. Sherlock takes a better hold of the gun, eyes glancing at the dot as well.

“Don’t be silly,” Moriarty says. “Someone else is holding the riffle. I don’t like getting my hands dirty.”

He stops at the opposite end of the room, straight in line with Sherlock and John and the gun still pointed at him and his mouth that keeps on opening and closing, dropping sounds that form into syllables that form into words Sherlock can’t help but find interesting.

“Did you like it, the little glimpse I’ve given you of what I’ve got going on in the big bad world? It’s my specialty. Crime. Like yours is fighting against it, the brave little hero that you are.”

Sherlock breathes in for what feels like first time since John walked through the door.

“ _Dear Jim_ , please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover’s nasty sister?” he says, trying not to sound too admiring.

Moriarty smiles and moves closer, nodding his head slowly.

“ _Dear Jim_ , please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?”

“Just so,” Moriarty confirms.

Sherlock takes another stuttering breath.

“Consulting criminal. Brilliant.”

Jim smiles brightly.

“Isn’t it?” he purrs.

He babbles on, bragging about how clever he has been, how easy it has been. At the mention of the victims John shakes his head and Sherlock’s eyes flicker back and forth between him and Moriarty advancing steadily, chirping constantly.

He stops a few metres away.

“Take this as a friendly warning, my dear. Back off.”

Then he takes another step forward.

“Although, I have loved this. This little game of ours.”

A wave of disgust flashes over John’s face and he turns his head away. Sherlock wants to grab him, shake him and scream, _I am not like him!_

Instead, he says, eyes fixed back to Moriarty,

“People have died.”

“That’s what people _do_!” Moriarty hollers so that the whole pool area rings with his anger.

“I will stop you,” Sherlock promises, more to John than to Moriarty or himself.

He looks at John.

“Are you all right?”

John doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look at him before Moriarty sneaks behind him and breathes in his ear,

“You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead.”

Then he looks up and nods once.

_Give him what he wants._

“Take it,” Sherlock says and thrusts the memory stick at Moriarty.

Moriarty’s expression doesn’t change but his tone feigns surprise.

“The missile _plaaans_ ,” he kisses the memory stick and strokes it between his fingers.

“Boooring.”

Sherlock blinks.

“I could have got them anywhere,” he says and tosses the stick to his left.

Sherlock’s whole body is so concentrated on following the stick fly to the pool that he completely misses John’s leap at Moriarty’s neck until the sudden movement and the grunt from the consulting criminal pull him back into focus.

“Sherlock, run!”

His heart feels like it drops through his chest and onto the tiled floor. He staggers to stay upright and hold the gun steadily.

Point it at him, he orders himself.

_Who?_

_Which is more merciful? Shoot John now and spend the few seconds you have left knowing that you killed him? Shoot Moriarty and spend the few seconds staring into John eyes, knowing we’re both going to die from the sniper’s bullets or from the bomb going off?_

Moriarty is laughing, cheering at John who turns his head awaydisgusted when he looks at him over his shoulder.

Sherlock can’t think.

_Heisreadytodieformeheisreadytodieformeheisreadytodieforme_

“Isn’t he sweet? I understand why you like having him around.”

John squeezes harder so that Moriarty has to struggle slightly to keep upright.

“But then again,” he continues, “people do get sentimental about their pets.”

John looks like he wants to break his spine.

Moriarty turns to look at him again.

“So touchingly loyal. But oops!”

Another red dot lands on Sherlock’s forehead and John freezes in horror.

“Gotcha!” Moriarty singsongs and John staggers backwards to let go of him, raises his hands above his head so that the snipers can see them.

 _Please don’t think about the war_ , Sherlock begs silently. _Please don’t let this become another nightmare. I was supposed to keep you safe._

He knows he is begging for nothing. John will be traumatized. He will leave. There is no way in hell he will stay now that Sherlock has failed him this badly.

“Do you know what will happen to you, Sherlock, if you don’t lay off?” Moriarty continues the conversation.

“Oh, let me guess, you’ll kill me,” Sherlock tries to sound disinterested, gun still steady as rock in his hand.

Moriarty pouts like he is disappointed.

“No, don’t be obvious. I mean, I am going to kill you anyway, some day. I don’t want to rush it though. I’m saving it for something special. No, no, no, no, no.”

With every shake of his head, the mirth drips away from him until his teeth look sharper and his eyes darker as he hisses,

“If you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you. I will burn the _heart_ out of you.”

 _I don’t have a heart_ , Sherlock thinks instantly. _Not in the sense you mean._

But the flash in Moriarty’s eyes, the deep deep stare Sherlock recognises from the lab ensures him that Moriarty knows exactly where to look for the missing beating organ.

John looks defeated.

_“I can stop John Watson, too. Stop his heart.”_

That would stop Sherlock’s heart too, which is exactly what Moriarty wants.

“I have been reliably informed I don’t have one," he tries anyway.

“Oh, but we both know that’s not quite true.”

_This man has an impeccable ear for music. His voice is like a symphony and if he hadn’t killed several people and strapped John into a bomb, I might actually like listening to it. I might actually like him._

“Ciao, Sherlock Holmes.”

“Catch. You. Later,” Sherlock follows him slowly, gun held upright until a door closes in the distance.

Then he is on his knees in front of John, pulling at the straps holding the bomb against him.

“All right? _Are you all right?_ ” he asks.

John’s arms drop down and he staggers back.

“Yes, I’m fine, Sherlock…”

 _Shutupshutupshutup, don’t move before I get this_ _thing_ _away from you, then scream at me, hit me, beat me up, but don’t say you’re fine!_

When the vest is safely away from them both, Sherlock is ready to break down and cry against John’s chest. Instead he runs after Moriarty, not to catch him, he knows that’s useless, but to gather himself, lean his head against the nearest wall and count to ten.

Returning to the pool, he finds John collapsed against the wall and breathing like someone having a panic attack. Sherlock paces back and forth the deck, almost missing the question of worry he never hears, answering it with the expected idiom, stops to choose his next words more carefully.

“That... thing... that you did, it was... good.”

No, it was definitely not good. On the scale of things that are good, this one is definitely not good on any level. It is not even on the scale of things that are not good, it should not exist at all. John jumping in front of the fire to save Sherlock’s life shouldn’t be an option.

He almost misses what John has to say to that.

“I’m glad no one saw that. You, taking my clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. People might talk.”

_Oh, dear, sweet, comforting John. Is this how you survived the war? Made jokes to break the tension?_

“People do little else.”

So exhilarating to see John smile in this kind of situation. For some reason smiling hurts a bit but not as much as Moriarty’s scream of joy from behind them, “Sorry, boys! I’m so _changeable_!”

 

He’ll look at himself in the mirror while shaving the next morning and see his lower lip swollen and chapped. He’ll lick on the torn skin and it will sting and draw a tiny drop of blood he’ll pick up on his thumb and inspect in the fluorescent light.

His lip is almost chewed to pieces and burning. He has bitten down on it when John hasbegun to recite Moriarty’s words, when he has pointed the gun at Moriarty/Jim-from-IT, bitten almost through it when John has jumped on Moriarty’s neck

_John shot through the neck by a crack-shot sniper just over Moriarty’s shoulder, John pushed to the pool and blown up with a remote control, white water fountain rising and covering Sherlock and Moriarty who throws his head back and laughs_

He’ll throw up in the toilet, head throbbing with images of everything that might have happened if the Bee Gees ringtone hadn’t started.

 

 

But it does start. Someone calls Moriarty just as Sherlock is ready to shoot the vest and die together with John on their own terms. Someone calls and Moriarty allows them to leave with an apology and a pondering “Wrong day to die.”

 

 

John lets him sleep in his room after they get home from the pool in the small hours of the morning. For the first time John declines Sherlock’s offer to call Lestrade or Mycroft or both to come and collect them as well as the lack of evidence Moriarty’s men have left behind. Sherlock texts Mycroft the details fast and discretely while they are walking home, eyes glued to the tense muscles in John’s neck. Lestrade will be furious they have left, but Sherlock can deal with him later.

It’s not that John doesn’t want to help to catch the bad guys. He agrees they need to act fast while the trail is still hot.

But right now someone else can pick up the pieces. He doesn’t want to deal with anyone tonight, he wants to go home and sleep.

 

Of course Sherlock wants to ask. He wants to know what Moriarty did to John in the hours between the front door of 221 closing behind his heels and his reappearance at the pool. He wants to know if he just has to pluck all of Moriarty’s teeth out with pincers or to stable his fingers on a table and burn the room around him so that the screaming inside his head will stop.

The speechlessness and the way John is fisting his hand tell that something did happen, something new and terrible, something he didn’t have to experience even in the war, and Sherlock wants nothing more than to shake the answers out of John.

 

Back at Baker Street, John disappears into the bathroom and Sherlock hears water running. He has timed John’s average showering speed before and this time it takes three times the 12 minutes it usually does.

When John emerges from the steamy bathroom, skin red and raw, Sherlock is waiting for him under the covers. There is no sighing or frowning, screaming, questions, not even a raised eyebrow. John just climbs in and grasps Sherlock’s wrist with his fingers before falling asleep. For a second Sherlock thinks this an attempt to seek comfort, like a child holding the hand of a grown-up in a strange place.

Then he realises John is taking his pulse.

He fell asleep knowing that Sherlock’s heart is still beating and there is still air in his lungs.

Air and not chlorine water and brick dust.

Blood pumping inside and not squirting out.

No matter what Moriarty might have said or done to John, his first concern was to make sure Sherlock is unharmed.

 

Sherlock lies on his side, pulse beating against the fingers grasping his wrist, and watches John sleep.

 _How do normal people love? How can they bear it? It’s so all-consuming, you can’t think or feel_ _anything else! How do they just keep on working and breathing and talking rubbish and doing_ _nonsense_ _, even when they are not with the one person they truly care about?_


	4. There's Always A Siren

“Why are you wearing a toga?”

“It is _not_ a toga,” Sherlock growls at John’s smirk. “It is a sheet, I was asleep, and then you woke me up with a case. I am not going to dress for something I don’t even have to leave the flat for. This is a six. We agreed it has to be at least a seven for me to go out.”

John turns the laptop screen to the muddy ground on the field filled with police tape and officers who are, once again, too incompetent to do anything themselves.

“When did we agree that?”

“Yesterday. Stop!” Sherlock yells. What an interesting patch of grass.

But John turns the screen back to himself.

“I wasn’t even at home yesterday, I was in Dublin.”

And doesn’t Sherlock know that.

“It’s hardly my fault you weren’t listening. Back to the grass, John.”

The screen stays too close to John’s face.

“And why would you sleep in just a sheet? You always sleep in your pyjamas.”

_Imaginary hands he wishes were John’s on his shoulders, ghosts of fingers he dearly hopes would be John’s covering his on the headboard, naked skin that should be touching another naked body, flushed chest, ruffled hair, a chance to be loud in an empty flat._

Sherlock blushes fiercely.

“What --- _Oh._ ”

John’s gaze flicks behind Sherlock’s shoulder.

Sherlock turns to look as well. Nothing there. Back to the screen.

 _John is blushing_. Sherlock can see the tint on his cheeks even with the crappy quality of the Skype video.

Meaning that John saw him blush as well. Damn!

No, wait.

He turns to look over his shoulder again. His bedroom door is open, nothing out of the ordinary is showing. Except that was were John was looking.

_What did he expect to see?_

_Oh, no._

“John ---“

“There’s the car.”

_Who cares about the bloody car! Get back here so I can correct this!_

Telepathy has never been John’s strong suit and he keeps the screen directed towards the Saab on the road.

Fine, then.

“This has got to be an eight, at least?” John encourages. “A man killed on a marooned field by a single blow to the back of the head from a blunt instrument which then magically disappeared along with the killer.”

Sherlock huffs.

“If you’d have paid any attention, you would not say anything has disappeared.”

_Neither would you jump to conclusions you really shouldn’t make._

“Go to the stream,” he orders.

“What’s in the stream?” John asks together with Detective Inspector Carter who has been tailing him, his bald spot catching the camera every once in a while.

Just then, two office workers from the Palace ( _whatever they are called these days, lackeys?_ ) enter the sitting room and tell Sherlock to get dressed and follow them. Rolling his eyes at the offered suit, Sherlock slips John’s flip flops on his feet but does not part with the sheet.

So when John walks in to the Queen’s fancy sitting room, all gold and expensive furniture, he first sees Sherlock sitting on the sofa facing the window, still in the sheet, tapping the floor with his toes in annoyance. John only shrugs at him, a silent question of ‘Why are we here?’ and when Sherlock does not have the answer, he sits down quietly on the edge of the sofa.

Until he realises the sheet is see-through.

“You wearing any pants?”

“Nnnno,” Sherlock stretches the consonant.

“Okay.”

It’s all so absurd they forget the reason John thinks Sherlock is wearing the sheet and laugh their arses off at the fact that he is wearing bedding in Buckingham Palace of all places. Their joy only intensifies when Mycroft emerges from the room next door just in time for John’s ‘Here to see the Queen?’

“Just once, could you two behave like grown-ups? Sherlock Holmes, you are 35 years old. Put your trousers on!”

He has not been this angry with Sherlock for a long time. So, despite the evident threat in his brother’s voice or the private secretary of the Queen being in the same room, Sherlock just has to take it a step further and so he attempts to leave the case and everyone included behind. He almost falls on his back when Mycroft stomps on the sheet and has to hurry to cover himself up.

It’s like they are children again. Mycroft using the exact same phrasing as he did when Sherlock was 13 and came home with a detention slip saying he had glued several of his classmates into their chairs.

“Grow up!”

“Get off my sheet!” Sherlock growls back.

“Or what?” Mycroft retorts, just like he used to.

Sherlock’s threat of walking away butt-naked gets him nowhere since Mycroft promises him he will let him, and he probably would, but John interferes with the kind of gentle voice that has never been used to stop their fighting before,

“Boys, please, not here.”

So they sit down for tea and biscuits and a briefing of what seems to be the biggest threat against the nation at the moment.

A woman. The Woman. Who has photographs of herself with another _young, female person in a number of compromising scenarios._

Referring to her by her preferred title, the Dominatrix, and what kind of services she provides gets a raised eyebrow from John and a muttered repetition of the title from Sherlock.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Mycroft says gently. “It’s to do with sex.”

Sherlock’s head whips up.

“Sex doesn’t alarm me!”

His voice is shaking, _is it shaking, why is it shaking?_

Mycroft sneers.

“How would you know?”

It’s a low blow, and Mycroft knows it, he regrets it the second it’s out. But he hides his expression better than Sherlock, who can feel his face fall through the floor.

“These are all from her website,” Mycroft says, handing him more prints of Irene Adler, the first one featuring her with a whip she seems to be keen on chewing. Sherlock makes sure he scrapes Mycroft’s hand with his fingernails when he takes the photos. Childish, but so is their whole relationship these days. Mycroft barely flinches, but his smile wavers and he looks away.

“Text me the address,” Sherlock says, collects himself and John and returns to Baker Street to look for a disguise.

He is already in his bedroom when John trots up the stairs.

“What are you doing?” he asks the clothes flying across the room and hitting the window.

“Going to battle, John! Need the right armour!”

Policeman, mail man, Jehovah’s Witness. He feels like a child in a costume shop choosing an outfit for Halloween.

_Mycroft as Papa Bear and he himself as Child Bear strolling round their posh neighbourhood with their empty pots of honey to collect candy._

He snickers.

“What’s so funny?” asks John from the door.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock answers to his clergyman disguise.

John smirks.

“Yes, I admit he is hilarious. Any other reason besides the fact that he, as the unofficial head of the nation, is in trouble with a woman who gets her living from beating sexually frustrated clients with a riding crop?”

Sherlock giggles.

“Imagine him in a meeting with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary and the first thing they see when he opens his briefcase are the pictures he printed from her website.”

“Also, you left my flip-flops under the sofa at the Palace,” John notes pulling on his coat as Sherlock rushes through the door, sound of laughter dancing after him like pearls on a string.

He goes back into case mode in the taxi, gets out round the corner to the Adler residence and asks John to punch him in the face.

Ten minutes later, he is sitting on Irene Adler’s expensive sofa in her luxurious sitting room, his cheekbone bleeding, eyes scanning the ever pricier coffee table, mirror and curtains.

“Sorry to hear you’ve been hurt,” a purring voice sounds from the hall and he presses the handkerchief back to his cheek and whimpers pathetically.

“I don’t think Kate caught your name,” the voice continues.

Clickety-clack of high heels reach the door. Sherlock lifts his eyes and tries to sound disoriented,

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’m ---“

Standing in the doorway, Irene Adler is only wearing a politely inquiring expression and black high heels.

The first thought that passes through Sherlock’s brain after the blood returns sends warning lights blaring and plan after plan to flip uselessly inside his skull, only to drop to the bottom.

_She knows._

“Always hard to remember an alias when you’ve had a fright, isn’t it?”

She reaches out her hand to grab the collar from around his neck. He smells her perfume, categorises the fragrance and saves it on his hard drive.

But there’s nothing else.

“Miss Adler, I presume.”

His best shit-eating I-know-best face in place and some stupid popular culture nonsense dribbling down his chin, all to try and intimidate her into thinking she does not have the upper hand.

“I could cut myself slapping that face,” she says admiring his cheekbones.

Deep breath in, she’s clearly thinking about it.

_Oh, don’t go there._

“Would you like me to try?”

She snatches the collar between her teeth just as John walks through the door.

 

Of course he looks. She is a beautiful woman and he is clearly attracted to them all. And they to him or they wouldn’t allow him to follow them home. Even Irene Adler measures him for a while, rakes him up and down and locks her eyes to his face before sitting down and offering them tea, concentration again securely on Sherlock.

She is sitting naked in front of him, and he sees nothing.

_??????_

He looks at John, who crunches his eyebrows at him in confusion.

 _Two day’s shirt,_ _electric razor,_ _date tonight_ , _hasn’t_ _phoned sister, new toothbrush, night out with Stamford_

Squinting at Irene Adler:

_??????_

Nothing. Neither here nor there.

Irene Adler breaks the tension by starting on the similarities between him and the disguise. He tries to look politely intrigued in turn.

_Believe in a higher power, i.e. yourself._

Spot on, that.

“And somebody loves you.”

Now well _that’s_ surprising.

She’s back to John, speaking with that low purr that seems to be her business voice.

“If I’d have to punch that face, I’d avoid your nose and teeth, too.”

Usually John’s laugh is like cotton candy, soft and sweet, and it still has that edge to it when he tries to hide his embarrassment behind a stern expression but there’s something so very far away in his chuckle.

“Could you put something on, please?”

It is nothing like what Sherlock got for his sheet, or even his exposed upper torso at the Palace, but John is clearly uncomfortable, like Irene Adler’s nudity in her own home is more disturbing than Sherlock’s at the heart of the British nation.

Sherlock doesn’t know how to interpret this. So he offers an explanation for John’s discomfort by stating he likely doesn’t know where to look, and she all but offers herself to John by stepping up to stand directly in front of him.

“I think he knows exactly where,” she says cheerfully.

John swallows and straightens his posture, eyes glued to hers.

“Not so sure about you,” she says ponderingly to Sherlock.

So he offers her his coat to hide the disturbing nudity, and once she is enrobed in it she takes off her shoes and her sex appeal with them. Lacking her killer heels she is suddenly just a regular woman in an oversized coat, even her voice rises a few octaves to a more feminine chirpy tune.

Such an ordinary woman and yet she can still surprise Sherlock. She begins to speak of the murder they have been investigating, of course familiar with the case by knowing what some nameless policeman likes.

“And you like policemen?” John asks casually, like they are talking about the weather instead of sexual fantasies.

“I like detective stories _and_ detectives. Brainy is the new sexy,” she says, drawing another smile from John, and Sherlock is suddenly struck by a very uncomfortable image of where that kind of smile might lead with her.

The idea makes him stammer which pulls both of their attention back to him.

It’s time to end this. Move on, dazzle both members of his fan club with deductions, distract Irene Adler’s perhaps-still-more-than-ordinary mind, catch her off guard with the fire alarm and open her secret safe.

Easy peasy.

Except when he is thrown off by her sarcastic ‘Think’ while he is in the middle of figuring out the key code, just before three Americans burst in through the door with John at gunpoint. John, who apologises to Sherlock for not being able to fight them off bare-handed.

“Sir, I want you to open the safe,” a balding American says.

“Oh, I’d love to, but I don’t know the code,” Sherlock says, slowly raising his hands over his head.

Clearly they don’t take his word for it because the gun one of the less devious henchmen has merely been pointing at John’s back is now pressed against his neck.

He thinks he sounds like he is crying for mercy with the one phrase he alwaystries so hard to avoid.

“I don’t know!”

At the moment, he hates Irene Adler. He hates the man standing in front of him, pointing the gun at his sternum. He hates the man pushing the gun against John’s neck. He hates Mycroft. He hates the secretary who came to get him to the Palace. He hates the Queen. He hates everyone who had anything to do with John ending up on his knees on this woman’s cream carpet and sounding like he is going to have a panic attack from all the memories that must be flooding back.

_Gun pointed at his head, ignoring it to patch up the wounded soldier by his feet, a bang, blood from the enemy soldier now dead spattering his back and neck, bullet going through his shoulder instead of his skull, just missing everything vital and important, giving him a scar for life, but at least he is alive, alive, alive._

Though he hates her, she’s the only one who can help. He turns to her just in time to see her glance down.

 

 

 

 

Of course. A woman so fond of her form would naturally use something so disgustingly intimate as her key code. She is the walking image of pride after all.

Disgusted, he turns round to type her measurements on the safe’s keyboard. Hand on the handle, he looks over his shoulder, not to check he has been correct but because his instinct tells him that though this woman is extremely vain, she is not stupid. He looks at her for possible additional instructions and gets them.

“Vatican cameos!” he orders, and John dives down.

Safe opens, the gun inside goes off and kills one of the henchmen which gives them the benefit of surprise and Sherlock takes everything out on the American who ordered John’s brains to be blown out.

 

Suddenly his own brain kicks in again, he dashes to the street, runs upstairs, is stabbed with a needle, slammed down with a leather riding crop ( _nice, fine leather, will not leave scratchy marks, only smooth whip slashes_ ), Irene Adler’s tongue goes to lick her lips in an erotic imitation of John’s unconscious tic, and he is left staring at John’s misty form that appears in his field of vision, all concern and blurred contours.

 

He is taken home, he believes, because he wakes up in his own bed, clothes still on, head full of cotton from the drug, nostrils filled with a scent he doesn’t recognize yet, and John’s hand on his lower back pushing him to bed.

_Let the hand stay there, it steadies the world so nicely, John’s hand on my bum._

It doesn’t. John leaves, assuring him he’ll be right next door if Sherlock should need him. Before he realises it himself, Sherlock, drugged to the eyeballs, mumbles something into his pillow and flops down on the sheets. He barely registers the sigh and words that sound defeated,

“No reason at all.”

  
  
At dawn, with the last traces of the narcotic only making him spasm and squirm every once in a while, he feels a hand on his forehead and scrabbles for it desperately.

_John John John Johnny. Is that what your mother called you? Did she have a nickname for you? Did she coo it in your ear when you were a baby? Did she take care of you when you were sick? Mine never did, she never had the time, she never wanted to, she never wanted me, it was always Mycroft, Mycroft took care of me, he hugged me, he told me stories (did you know there are over 6,000 traffic lights in London and I’ve counted all of them in the years I’ve been going round the city?), Mycroft loved me, he really truly did, and I ruined it all, I lost my brother when I grew too tall and too cold_

A voice whispers in the dark,

“Shh, shhhh, don’t cry.”

_I’m not crying. I never cry. I must be leaking somehow. Or perhaps I’m bleeding from my eyes. Oh yes, bleeding is far better than crying, being tormented by other children, they see the tears and they keep on going, they see the blood and they walk away_

He doesn’t know how much of it he says out loud. He is never going to ask. And John doesn’t mention it either. That’s the second time he has seen Sherlock laid out all bare and sore and he has only wanted to comfort him on both occasions.

 

John was scared stiff at the pool, being so close to death again after he had thought he’d be safe. But still his first instinct was to protect Sherlock, to jump on Moriarty’s neck, ready to be blown up. Screaming for Sherlock to leave him and run away.

All the while, the red dot was pointed at his heart. Sherlock didn’t need a mirror to know where the other sniper pointed theirs when John froze and let Moriarty go. Of course it was his head, he doesn’t have a heart after all. Where else would they aim when they wanted to shoot to kill?

His eyes betray him, and John knows that. That’s why he always goes to the eyes first when he tries to look for emotions from Sherlock. He wrote about it on his blog, how hurt and childlike Sherlock looked for a while.

He was hurt, yes. But everything else John got wrong. He never thought John was Moriarty, for a split second he didn’t even recognise John in the damn coat, his face so filled with fear he looked like a different person. He went for Sherlock’s eyes and saw disappointment there.

 

Sherlock knew. John didn’t have to open his coat to show him what was under it.

 

 

\\\

Mycroft comes to see them in the morning, discreetly handing John’s flip-flops back to him, and for the first time in a very long time Sherlock attacks his brother with teeth and claws. He stands in front of Mycroft, stares into his eyes when he is told to stay out of the Irene Adler case in the future, silently snarling at him with every fibre of his being, _‘You almost got him killed.’_

Mycroft excuses himself in the middle to answer a phone call and returns saying something clearly in code about Bond Air and Coventry which Sherlock finds vaguely interesting.

It’s to do with Irene Adler. Has to be. Otherwise the Americans wouldn’t be interested in her.

But Mycroft doesn’t budge, doesn’t spare any details about his secret missions concerning her futureso Sherlock chases him out of the room with a flawless rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’, which makes John smile.

 

 

He remembers it suddenly in the middle of the afternoon.

He said something very hurtful to John after he took his hand away from the general area of his back.

_‘Why would I need you?’_

John walks into the kitchen, ready to start on dinner. Sherlock is once again seated at the table where he has collected everything he can find about Irene Adler. Several photographs of her, either from the website or from the less prestigious newspapers, are strewn all over the table and on the floor. John is standing on one, his heel resting on Irene’s buttock. The image it creates is not far from some of the stuff she does with her clients in reality, and Sherlock shudders at the thought of John and Irene together.

John moves from his spot at the table where he has stopped to look at one of the articles and on his way to the fridge he glances towards Sherlock’s bedroom. Lifting his eyes, he sees Sherlock staring at him and blushes crimson.

“Sorry,” John starts. “I wasn’t…“

_Ah, he’s thinking about yesterday._

“It’s none of my business who you spend your time with. I was just surprised. I’ve never seen you with anyone. Not that I want to! I mean, I wouldn’t want to pry if you had someone here…“

_This is ridiculous._

“John ---“

“It’s fine, it’s all fine!”

_Except the one thing that is not._

“John, I seriously just woke up feeling too hot and took my pyjamas off. No one was in my room other than myself, I didn’t _have_ anyone or anything except my own company and you can believe me that all I was doing was sleep.”

_Lies, lies! Liar liar liar!_

“Oh. Well. Okay.”

_Oh for goodness’ sake!_

“Why is it all about sex with you people, hmm?” he throws the pile of photos on the table. “You, Irene Adler, all of you are the same. It’s just carnal pleasure and nothing more. Why can’t you just think with your _brains_ for once instead of with your genitals?”

John is starting to look like he did when Sherlock interrupted his date with Miranda.

Like before, Sherlock just can’t stop.

“What is so great about it anyway? Disgusting, _slimy_ \---”

“Intimate?” John pipes out. “Caring? Expressing someone you want them?”

Sherlock snorts.

“That you _need_ them?”

That hurts more than Irene Adler’s leather riding crop.

“It is not all about the sex, Sherlock. It’s giving yourself to someone who you hope will stay and will give as much of themselves to you as you are giving of yourself to them. But I wouldn’t assume you understand since you don’t _care_ about anyone.”

 

 

 \\\

_Why would I need you would I need you I need you_

_I need you so much I can’t breathe._

 

 

\\\

John gives him the silent treatment for days, never leaving the flat for more than to go to work or to the shops or to Mrs Hudson’s. He never strays far but sits in his armchair, back turned to Sherlock, doing anything but look at him.

Sherlock is walking on pins and needles the whole time, sitting in the kitchen with Irene Adler’s photos covering the table and he curses the fact that John’s chair is not the one facing the kitchen. If he tried to move it, John would probably just turn it round again and keep on ignoring him.

When he moves all the papers in the sitting room and sits in his own chair in front of the fire, John doesn’t even glance at him and even looks like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

This is different from the silent treatment he usually gets. Before it has been John’s stomping footsteps down the stairs and the bang of the front door, night or two spent away and the awaited return after which everything goes to normal.

No one wins. No one apologizes. This time, however, John seems to be determined that he is to stay in his chair until Sherlock gives him something that can even remotely be interpreted as an apology with the help of Sherlock-English dictionary.

On an evening, John comes downstairs with his shoes and the shoeshine kit in hand. Frugal man that he is, he only has a few pairs and keeps each one in spotless condition.

He puts them in line in front of himself, humming something, starts with the more formal pair Sherlock has named his Groovy Shoes (because they are fancier and always shine more than the others). Then there’s the Everyday Shoes or Criminal Chasing Shoes and finally the Date Shoes.

_Haven’t seen those since..._

There is suddenly a lump in his throat.

“You cancelled the date for me.”

John’s neck tenses and the humming stops.

“What?”

It’s impossible to speak with such little amount of oxygen flowing to your brain.

“You,” Sherlock croaks, “had a date, the day we met Irene Adler, you had a date. And you stayed with me. You cancelled the date.”

_For me._

John finally lifts his head and looks at him for the first time in a week.

“Well, what did you expect? You were out of your head, drooling everywhere with god knows what running in your veins. I wasn’t sure as hell going to leave you alone.”

“Thank you.”

John looks baffled.

“You’re welcome.”

He looks at Sherlock for a while longer, then goes back to the shoes.

The bare feet next to his polished Loake boots make him lift his gaze again.

“Thank you.”

Sherlock is red and looks like he is about to choke on his tongue. His hands are hanging loose by his sides but his toes keep squirming.

“I... appreciate your concern and am grateful that you took care of me in my hour of need.”

He grimaces. Even he can hear how lame, how fake it sounds.

But John is smiling. _How is he smiling? Why is he smiling? Is he laughing at me?_

“I think that’s the most sincere thing you have ever said to me. And I haven’t seen you that embarrassed since you thought I was coming on to you at Angelo’s.”

The red on Sherlock’s cheeks deepens.

John turns back to his shoes, only to see the toes still wriggling next to them. Sherlock is like a cat on hot bricks on an equally hot tin roof, in desperate need of some kind of closure.

“We’re good, Sherlock.”

It’s paralyzing, the phrasing of it.

 

 

\\\

_Things that are good: us._

 

 

\\\

It’s Christmas. For real this time. Even the time of year is right. It’s the first one Sherlock spends with John and since they are at Baker Street, they get Mrs Hudson and Lestrade in the deal as well.

Sherlock doesn’t like the extravaganza his landlady and flatmate are apparently putting together with twinkly lights and mistletoe hanging everywhere, the skull getting a Christmas hat as well as a stocking of its own (Sherlock peeks, and John has actually given the skull the same amount of chocolates and small bric-a-brac as he has Sherlock and himself) and a decent-sized Christmas tree smelling away in the corner.

“Oh, shut up, you Grinch,” John says over his shoulder while trying to decorate the windows. “It smells nice, it smells of Christmas and I like it. You just have to tolerate it for a day and then we can get rid of it. You can eat the candies off it if that’ll make you feel better.”

The tree does smell good and the Hershey’s kisses John has decorated it with _are_ very nice. Sherlock chews on his fifth and sits in his chair to tune his violin in order to provide the Christmas carols he apparently has promised Mrs Hudson while in the middle of an experiment, though he does not recall this ever happening himself.

He performs well, gets a round of applause, a _Marvellous!_ from John and proceeds effectively to break the mood when he forgets John’s new girlfriend’s name on purpose, reveals to Lestrade that his wife is still having an affair and the next thing John says to him is “Shut up!” as he informs him that his sister is still drinking.

The worst comes when he deduces Molly’s gift, just for laughs. He knows it has to be for someone special, and isn’t that what you are supposed to do, tease your friends for having a crush? He only hears the sting of his words when they die in his throat as he reads the card on the box.

_Dearest Sherlock_

_Love Molly xxx_

 

Three kisses. The engraving on John’s phone. _Harry Watson. From Clara. xxx._

 

_Oh, God._

 

He looks at Molly, and suddenly it’s like staring into a mirror. She looks exactly like he feels every time John is angry, tired, going out of the door with a bang.

“You always say such horrible things,” Molly breathes. “Every time. Always, always.”

Is that really him? The horrible person who insults those he loves to get attention or because he doesn’t know any better.

“I am sorry.”

The air freezes round him, as does everyone in the room. John looks at him like he doesn’t understand the language Sherlock is speaking.

“Forgive me.”

It sounds so rehearsed again, so fake. Like when he tried to thank John for staying with him after Irene Adler had drugged him.

He goes to Molly and kisses her cheek, lets his lips hover over her cheekbones, nose lingering on the perfume on her temple.

She has never used it. It’s always just the smell of shampoo and lilac moisturizer on her.

_She put on perfume for me._

Irene Adler interrupts whatever Molly is going to say. Or the recording of her moan does. Sherlock gets a text and every pair of eyes are suddenly on Molly alone.

“Oh, no, that wasn’t me!” she blushes, face even more crimson than the wrapping on her gift.

“No, it was me,” Sherlock admits.

The looks on Molly and Lestrade are priceless.

“My _phone_ ,” Sherlock corrects.

He doesn’t really hear Lestrade’s question on why the hell he has a text alert noise like that, and half misses the fact that John has been counting the texts Irene Adler has sent him. Because the text says ‘Mantelpiece’, and there is a box the colour of her lipstick sitting on it.

She has broken into their flat at some point to leave it there and he has not noticed. What has he been so distracted with? The smells of Christmas covering her smell, the dim lights of the tree making everything darker.

Imagining kissing John under the mistletoe.

Locking himself in his room, he wonders at Irene Adler’s phone in his hand and how last time someone died because of him the first thing he did was to admire Moriarty’s stakes in the game, how he now feels the empty hole in his heart, once again for someone he barely knew.

Which is exactly what Mycroft tells him when they go to the morgue to see the body. Sherlock looks at Molly, wearing a comfy jumper and her hair down, and he feels his heart sink down to his stomach.

It’s not her, definitely not her. If anything, Sherlock knows her body, her attributes as a woman. He knows her skin, though he was never able to read what was under it.

And that skin, bones, blood, organs and muscles is not Irene Adler.

“That’s her,” he says to no one in particular.

 

 

Outside, Mycroft offers him a cigarette in celebration of Christmas but really he only wants to soften Sherlock to make him tell him how he knew they would find her like that. He does not tell about the phone in his pocket, mentions it as an unnamed object and turns away.

There is a family crying in the hall behind the glass doors.

“They all care so much,” Sherlock says, almost disgustedly. “Do you ever wonder if there is something wrong with us?”

Mycroft clearly tries to decide whether to tell Sherlock the truth or a softer white lie.

He decides on a mixture of the two,

“All lives end, all hearts are broken.” He turns to his brother. “Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. It will make some things harder and more painful, but also easier to bear afterwards.”

Sherlock exhales the cigarette smoke and grimaces.

“You are thinking about John.”

He freezes mid-inhale.

“You are better with him. And he is better with you. In the end, does the road really matter if the outcome is worth fighting for?”

 

 

Back at Baker Street, John has clearly just broken up with his girlfriend and gone through the whole flat with the help of Mrs Hudson in search of anything that might aid Sherlock in breaking his years of abstinence. Worrying about his sock index, unable to look John in the eye, Sherlock goes to his bedroom and locks the door.

He stares at the phone on his night stand until dawn. John comes to his door every hour but never says anything. Sherlock can see him standing there, probably leaning his ear against the door to hear anything out of the ordinary.

Sherlock eases his breathing to sound like someone who is deep asleep.

 

 

For the next week he plays his violin, barely eats or talks to John or Mrs Hudson. Irene Adler has a plan, and he needs to know what it is. He writes her down as notes on pieces of paper and plays them in front of the window, hoping to see her walk by, or at least one of her minions. She has to be in hiding for the plan to work, she will need the phone when she wants her life back.

John worries about him. His eyes stay on him more than usual, and there is a deeply sad look in them. He has not said anything to remind Sherlock he is not being polite enough or what he says is not the right thing to say, not after the _Shut up!_ at the Christmas party. He only turns round, makes the pondering face he always does and walks out of the room.

Come New Year, instead of the music papers, Sherlock is staring at John’s blog count that has been stuck at 1895 for weeks.

_A hacker? A message? Open the phone and you’ll find where I am?_

He almost tears the pocket of his dressing gown in two as he fishes the phone out and types in the four digits.

_Wrong. 3 attempts remaining._

Barely able to keep himself from cracking his bow in half, he returns to the window, only to see what he has been waiting for weeks.

The woman is not one of Mycroft’s (though John’s surrendering expression says he thinks she is), Sherlock is familiar with every one of them, and no matter how puny John might believe the secretaries who pick him up to be, Sherlock knows they all have the highest security rate and could kill you with their fingernails in two seconds.

Mycroft always sends the best to pick John up and this woman looks like she is trained to look beautiful for someone to watch, not to fight.

So he jumps into his clothes and follows the car to an abandoned factory, just in time to hear John tell Irene Adler to reveal she is alive.

John is so angry at her. _For what she did to me? What he thinks she did to me? Is that all for me?_

 _Because he thinks you are in love with her,_ says a voice inside his head.

_But he thinks it’s important I know, he thinks I’m hurting and he doesn’t want me to hurt._

_Because he thinks you are in love with her,_ repeats the voice.

Worried that she is losing her phone with John walking out of the door, telling the truth to Sherlock and threatening to shoot her himself if she ever comes near him again, she asks quickly,

“What should I say?”

“What do you normally say?” John bellows, and her breath hitches. “You’ve texted him a lot!”

“It’s just the usual stuff,” she tries to keep her voice even.

“There is no usual in this case,” John snarls. “You don’t know him _at all_. Believe me, I don’t even want to know what was in those texts but whatever it was wasn’t _usual_ for him, because Sherlock Holmes is not _usual_.”

She begins to recite.

“’Good morning.’ ‘I like your funny hat.’ ‘I’m sad tonight, let’s have dinner.’ ‘You look sexy on Crimewatch, let’s have dinner.’ ‘I’m not hungry. Let’s have dinner.’”

The silence that follows is so heavy Sherlock almost bursts in.

Then he hears John say slowly,

“You _flirted_ with Sherlock Holmes?”

She lets out a laugh.

“At him. He never replies.”

This clearly makes it worse in John’s eyes. He is confused by the fact that for once in his life Sherlock has not made a smart retort at someone, and she asks if that makes her special, whether John is _jealous_. The conversation takes a completely unexpected turn when John tries to convince her he and Sherlock are not a couple and she bulldozes him with a quick ‘Yes, you are.’

Then Sherlock gets her text proclaiming she is not dead and still wants to have dinner. He barely sees the text when he opens it. John’s ‘I’m not actually gay,’ ringing in his head he turns round and walks out of the building.

 

 

John comes home and Sherlock plays his violin until he falls asleep in his chair. He has tried to talk about her, trying to ask the questions Sherlock doesn’t know the answers to himself. So when John is finally snoring with the back of his head resting heavily against the chair, Sherlock takes his phone and texts her a New Year’s greeting. Then he slides the glass of whiskey slowly out of John’s grip, takes a sip and pretends he can taste John’s lips on the glass.

 

 

Irene Adler’s phone consumes him. It lies on his nightstand most nights and goes round London in his pocket. He takes it to Bart’s to have it x-rayed, finds several explosives inside it and for the first time he thinks something positive about her ( _Oh, you are good!_ ).

Molly, clearly not having forgotten Christmas but attempting to steer things back to normal, stares at the radiograph of the phone on the computer screen. She thinks it must be his girlfriend’s since he is x-raying it.

“Well, we all do silly things,” she giggles.

Yes, they do, don’t they? Silly women with their silly games, and oh she does love to play games.

“She does?” Molly sounds terrified.

The address she sent the phone to. _221b._

_Wrong. 2 attempts remaining._

He’s in a foul mood rest of the day.

 

 

He torments his brain day in and day out with every possible option for the passcode, almost tries several of them and only changes his mind at the last second. He tries to figure out where to look.

 

There are times though, very few of them, when he doesn’t think about the phone at all. For instance, in early January, right after they have found out she is actually alive, John falls in through the thin ice covering the Thames.

Cursing, begging, praying inside his head ( _Please, God, you saved him once, save him again!_ ), all the while calculating the force of the current, the distance of the thawed patch of ice he knows is there (has to be there, _oh god let it be there_ ), how fast he himself can run, crawl to the hole and grab John just when he passes under him.

It’s like from one of John’s action films. Like mother lifting a truck that has fallen on her child. Superhuman, unnatural, so very, very good.

John is so small, so blue, so freezing, and Sherlock begins to breathe life back into him, praying inside his head that this is not the only time he gets to kiss him.

John coughs, and Sherlock gathers him against his chest, pulls his Belstaff off and drapes it over them both.

_Things that are good: John, breathing, moving, alive._

Broken syllables streaming from John while they wait for the paramedics wash the phone clear out of Sherlock’s mind.

“Ch-ch-cold…”

Sherlock tries to comfort him, look for words someone else might use in a similar situation. The only thing he can think of is John’s hand on his brow and he himself spasming under the after-effects of Irene Adler’s drug. John’s voice hushing him to sleep.

No sleep for John now, very important to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep, very important to keep his eyes open, very important to get him warm.

_Tell him how much you love him. That’ll keep him awake, that’ll burn his insides to ashes, that’ll electrify him with shock. That’ll keep him away when he is able to walk._

The paramedics almost tear the coat apart when they finally reach them and start to rub warmth back to John’s stiff joints. One of them pulls at the coat, the other at Sherlock who has attached himself so tightly against John’s back he seems like a natural part of him.

They take John to hospital, just to be safe. They make him warm again and bring back his pinkish hue with a touch of feverish red on his cheeks.

It’s not life-threatening, so Sherlock takes him home, helps him up two flights of stairs and into his bed where John proceeds to snore off his illness. When he is done and they are back to business, Sherlock realises he hasn’t thought about Irene Adler or the phone in five days.

 

 

It takes six months for them to hear from her again. Six months of staring at the phone and attempting to will the passcode out of it, for it to magically just give up its secrets, let Sherlock know if he finally won or lost and allow him to sleep his nights in peace. John begins to comment on the bags under his eyes and sigh at his uneaten breakfast-lunch-dinner that has been sitting there for hours.

“ _For God’s sake_!” Sherlock screams and hurls the plate laden with mashed potatoes and peas at the wall. The smiley face gets the full assault of Mrs Hudson’s cooking, still smiling when the mix of yellow and green slides down.

“I can’t _think_ in here with you pestering me constantly!”

He takes the ashtray he stole from Buckingham Palace and throws it at the opposite wall. It collides with the bookshelf and breaks neatly in two. A few books, unbalanced on top of the others as they are, drop to the floor where Sherlock pounces at them and starts tearing pages off of them. He claws at the Penguin classic and gets it to pieces in no time, but the hardcover copy of _Middlemarch_ is tougher and the paper like plastic instead of pulp. He throws it in the fireplace and looks for matches.

John’s hand appears in his field of vision, a familiar box of matches balanced on his palm. For some reason, he is smiling.

“Why do you have that?” Sherlock asks.

John’s smile just widens. His gaze goes to the broken ashtray, and it’s like he is actually sorry it’s now in pieces.

“You have no reason to carry those round. You don’t smoke.”

“No, I don’t,” John replies, takes Sherlock’s hand and puts the matches in it.

He goes to the ashtray and picks up the two pieces. He weighs them in his hands, tries to see if he could still put them together with some glue.

“But my employer does,” he says cheerily.

There is a tube of Pritt somewhere in the middle of the clutter on the table. Sherlock stands still with the matches on his open palm as John squeezes the almost dry glue out of the tube.

“I’m not your employer.”

John looks at him.

“No, thank God, since you don’t pay me anything,” he huffs and tries to fit the pieces of glass together.

“What am I then?” Sherlock whispers.

Ashtray back in one piece, though the crack still fairly visible, John places it on the window sill to dry. Then he goes to the kitchen and gets a garbage bag and a rag and holds them out for Sherlock.

“You are my best friend,” he says. “Now clean up your mess and stop sulking. You’ll get there eventually.”

Sherlock looks at the box of matches like he doesn’t know what he should do with it so that he can grab the rag and bucket in turn. John’s hand reaches out again to take the box, but Sherlock’s brain finally catches up with him and he hides the box in his pocket.

“I’ll get you a new one,” he promises.

“What, the match box?” John asks as Sherlock gets to work.

“The ashtray,” Sherlock says, peeling a piece of potato from the wall.

John stands next to him and picks up the broken plate.

“I don’t think they are going to let you back in the Palace after what happened last time.”

“They will,” Sherlock says, scooping up a handful of peas and dumbing them in the bucket. “As soon as I solve the case, they will invite me over for tea once a week and hand me a souvenir bag full of ashtrays.”

John sighs dramatically.

“How am I ever going to make you quit smoking if the Queen is going to show you such a bad example?”

“Queen and country!” Sherlock yells from the kitchen as he empties the bucket into the bin.

 

 

Six months, and Sherlock comes home to find Irene Adler asleep in his bed, content in the safety Baker Street provides in a city where round any corner a threat might be lurking.

He allows her to use the shower and dress herself in his dressing gown. He allows her to flirt with him in the hopes that it will get the passcode out of her. For a moment he thinks he has succeeded with the fake phone in her hand and the look of surprise on her face. But no. She is even cleverer than that, actually rather good, he has to admit.

“You’re not so bad,” she admits before she sits him down at the desk to take a look at the stolen email full of codes.

“Impress a girl,” she whispers, and the world slows down round him. The numbers and letters dance in front of him, forming a pattern, her mouth comes closer and closer, John lifts his eyes and something like worry, something like jealousy passes over his face, the world goes back to its regular speed again and lips land on his cheekbone.

So rare that feeling. It sends other memories flooding in. Mycroft, Mrs Hudson, aunt Cecilia, father. And then, the familiarity of the lips reminding him of the red lipstick print above his jaw when he woke up, head hollow from the drug, the imprint of her mouth mostly rubbed on his pillowcase, the skin shining red after he noticed it in the bathroom mirror and scrubbed the stain away with a nail brush.

It’s not far away now, the solution. It’s hidden somewhere in the seating order of a plane leaving from Heathrow that night, in Mycroft’s whispered confirmation on the phone, in

“Coventry.”

“Never been,” Irene Adler says, sitting in John’s chair, looking at him softly and full of interest. “Is it nice?”

John has disappeared, she has taken his chair, is trying to inhabit his place in Sherlock’s head as well, she stares at him when he tells her about Coventry and her voice rasps,

“Have you ever had anyone?”

Again that word, _have_. Like sex automatically implies ownership.

He must look extremely puzzled because she continues,

“And when I say had, I’m being indelicate.”

She moves closer and touches his hand.

“Not even with John?”

Sherlock flinches.

“Ah,” her fingers press against his wrist. “So it’s not that you don’t want to. You just don’t have the courage to ask.”

Pulse on her wrist feels elevated, or is it his own pulse? Never measure it with your thumb, might get the wrong reading, feel your own rabbit pulse instead of _(the weak but necessary beat of John’s heart on the frozen Thames)_ Irene Adler’s palpable thump against his fingers _._

“Is it his eyes?” she tries her business voice again, with a touch of smoke in it, low and soft.

“Or his smile?”

“Or perhaps,” she edges closer, and without noticing, Sherlock leans in as well, better to hear John described in that voice trained on reciting fantasies, “he sees a side of you the others don’t and it turns you on that you alone can show him what you are truly like?”

“Remember what I said, about how you don’t know where to look?”

Her lips are too close to his and he is still not pulling away.

“I take it back. You do know where to look. You just don’t know if you are allowed.”

They are mercifully interrupted by Mrs Hudson calling for Sherlock in her motherly voice that is perfect to kill the mood. Irene Adler shuffles away with a regretful sigh. Mrs Hudson climbs upstairs, followed by the secretary who first took Sherlock to Buckingham Palace. He is taken to the airport, boards a plane full of corpses and finally it all seems to make sense until he hears the soft sinful voice sigh behind him, an elbow pushes him aside and Irene Adler is talking to Mycroft, promising to bring the nation to its knees in front of her unless she gets what she wants.

 

He doesn’t put it all together before it’s almost too late, but suddenly he knows exactly where to look. The first answer was on her body, the key code to her safe the measurements to what hides her best, the skin, flesh and bones covering her heart. This, her life, must be something much more intimate.

When he finally understands that _elevated heart rate + dilated pupils + requests for dinner = the pun-like play with his name_ , the key goes to the lock and the walls of the heart bounce open. He hands the phone to Mycroft and can’t look him in the eye. He calls him by the familial title, more of an apology than he can ever manage and stares into Irene’s tear-filled eyes.

He should have remembered how ordinary she was.

He should have remembered how Moriarty uses people who love.

There is no reason to hate her anymore, she has the same kind of lock and key on her emotions for him as Mycroft does, as he himself has for his feelings towards John.

They are all so very similar, love-deprived and starved, and that is why he saves her in the end. He flies off to Karachi, puts his sword-fighting skills to use and takes the main role in her knight-in-a-shining-armor fantasy.

Ordinary little girl, who just wants be saved.

 

She is good at what she does, and Sherlock admires her for that. Just like he admires John’s hands for what they can do to heal someone or how he admires Moriarty for his interest in the game.

The sheets in his bed still smell of her when he goes to bed after he returns and buries his nose into the pillow, breathing in the scent that he suddenly remembers from even further back than Irene’s nocturnal visit to his bedroom while he was sleeping off the still tolerable after-effects of her drug.

It takes him back to his mother’s beauty box where he would dig when she couldn’t see, five years old and interested in everything he’d go and sniff his mother’s make-ups, Chanel No. 5 and the several different types of hand lotion, would eventually be found by Mycroft who wiped off the smears of lipstick from his face and carried him out of the room with his small body thrown over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, his nose bumping against his brother’s back, he himself screaming with joy. The scent would linger and before Sherlock at the age of nine finally realised his mother would not leave any memento of herself to him other than a cold shoulder and the scent of No. 5, cool and black like her dress-clad back, he would open the door to his mother’s bedroom and hope he could one day see her sitting at the table, turn to look at him and smile.

Now he goes face down to the pillows, smells Irene and doesn’t think about his mother at all, dismissing the memory with a metaphorical flick of his wrist. Now, he will smell the perfume, remember Irene Adler, the woman of women, The Woman, and her warm wrist and the smile she gave him when he turned up to cut off the heads of her monsters.

Snatching his phone from the night stand, he flicks open her most recent text, sent from a pre-paid phone (he is sure Mycroft does not know about this one or he would not have allowed her to have it) a week earlier,

_‘Should I tell John Watson what Sherlock Holmes likes?’_

 

He makes Mycroft promise not to tell John about her rehabilitation. What his brother doesn’t promise is not to test John to see how freely he will give Sherlock the truth, even though it might hurt him. So he tells him Irene is dead and enjoys the look of grief John gives for his brother.

John comes home, still trying to decide what to tell Sherlock, clearly changing his mind even after he has planned to go with the lie of new identity and life in America but when Sherlock begs him for the empty shell of a phone, he places it gently in Sherlock’s palm and doesn’t say anything more but exits to hand the folder back to Mycroft.

Listening to John descend the stairs, Sherlock thinks on what Irene said.

_‘You just don’t know if you are allowed.’_

They were such a mystery to one another, both going the wrong way to try and interpret the other. Irene took the only approach she knew, tried to arise Sherlock’s sexual desires, receiving confused data that made her test her powers anew with John.

 _‘I think he knows exactly_ _where._ _Not sure about you.’_

John knew where to look. Away from her nakedness. Sherlock wouldn’t have cared about what he saw even if he looked, and that confused Irene.

That night, he inspects John as he moves around the flat until he walks past him to go to the fridge. When he goes back to the mug of tea waiting on the table, he glances at Sherlock who has turned his eyes to the microscope to make sure John does not see him stare.

After all, he does know where to look. Away, never at the same time as John, never let John catch him looking, never let him see inside his heart.

_Avert your eyes, look away the minute he turns around or it might get uncomfortable._


	5. We'd Be a Walking Disaster

_It’s almost midnight_ _. He_ _has_ _finally_ _finished all his homework and_ _is_ _ready to go to bed. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, he turns off the desk lamp and_ _begins to undress_ _. A creak on the wood floor stops him._

_“Mycroft?”_

_His shirt stuck to his ears he turns to look. His little brother is standing in the middle of the room, his fingers in his mouth, biting the cuticles._

_“There’s something under my bed.”_

_Night terrors again then. And now they’ve moved under Sherlock’s furniture._

_He gathers his brother in his arms and asks,_

_“Do you want me to take a look?”_

_Sherlock buries his face into his shoulder and nods frantically._

_They walk down the hall towards Sherlock’s room. Their mother, never too interested in her younger son, had only glanced over her shoulder after hearing about the reoccurring nightmares and had given orders to move the nursery as far away from Mycroft’s room as possible so that Sherlock wouldn’t disturb him. Mycroft himself would have been happy to share his room with his baby brother, if it meant the nightmares would stop._

_For some reason, they_ _are always_ _so_ _very realistic. No ghosts, no witches, just regular real-life terrors amplified by his baby brother’s mile-a-minute brain._

_“What was it this time?” he asks, lowering Sherlock to the floor, a fair distance away from the bed._

_“See for yourself,” comes a terrified whisper._

_Nothing under the bed, nothing in the closet, in Sherlock’s schoolbag or behind the books on the bookshelf. Swinging on his heels, Mycroft looks at_ _Sherlock’s_ _terrified shivering and brushes his fringe away from his eyes._

_“Probably got scared of me and ran away. What was it?”_

_“A wolf!”_

_Now this is new. No men with sharp machetes or coils of rope._

_“You heard Mummy talking with the caretaker, didn’t you?”_

_Sherlock bursts_ _into tears_ _._

_“I know it wasn’t there! I’m not stupid! Wolfs can’t climb through my window!”_

_He sobs and sniffs and rubs his face with his fists, still chubby like a child’s._

He is a child, _Mycroft realises suddenly._ He is only a little kid.

_And_ _just as suddenly he_ _knows_ _what it’s all about. He kneels in front of his brother and waits for the crying to stop and for Sherlock to look at him with his red puffy eyes._

_“I’m sorry that they bully you, Sherlock.”_

_Sherlock_ _hiccoughs_ _._

_“I’m sorry I can’t protect you from them. I’m sorry I can’t make it stop. I wish I could.”_

_He dries Sherlock’s eyes with his shirt sleeve._

_“You want to sleep next to me tonight?”_

_Sherlock nods, and Mycroft takes his hand and leads him out of the small grey nursery and across the giant house to his bright and airy bedroom_ _, vowing to himself that he will talk with Mother again in the morning. And if it doesn’t help, he’ll just have to visit the headmistress himself._

He remembers the little incident years later in the quiet of his office at the Diogenes Club. He sighs deep and throws a folder on several photographs of mugshot-like pictures of mental institution patients, detailed notes on their participation in a drug experiment, their autopsy reports and a group photo of scientists, one of whom is wearing a grey jumper with a picture of a giant dog on it, its mouth open and fangs gleaming.

 

 

\\\

Excitement. Interest. Bafflement. Disbelief. Anger.

“ _Lots of love Kirsty Stapleton aged 8.”_

He runs outside in his shirt sleeves, goes to the butcher’s who owes him a favour, chooses one of the fattest sows hanging from the ceiling and begins to stab it with a harpoon, naming every internal organ he hits. In Latin and in Greek.

Back at Baker Street, John is still sitting in his chair, dutiful as ever, looking for a case for him. He glances up when he bursts through the door, sees the harpoon first, then lifts his gaze slowly and almost raises his eyebrows over his head in surprise.

“Well, that was tedious,” is all Sherlock says.

He is soaked in pig’s blood from waist up and already bored out of his mind.

“You went on the tube like that?” John asks.

“None of the cabs would take me,” Sherlock snarls and walks to the bathroom.

 

First email in weeks, and it was sent by a primary school girl with pigtails and a missing pet rabbit!

Sherlock paces the sitting room angrily and bangs the harpoon sharply against the floor.

He is aching for a cigarette.

“John. I need some. Get me some.”

John looks like he is contemplating for a moment before saying “No”, and going back to his paper.

_Does he enjoy tormenting me? Is he still mad about the gallbladder in his tea mug?_

“ _Get me some!_ ” he snarls.

Now John’s refusal is sturdier.

“Cold turkey! We agreed!”

So it’s his doctor speaking, not his inner torturer.

Just as bad. Charlatans, all of them. Doctors.

He tries again.

By throwing everything on his table to the floor in search of a secret stash that _has to be there somewhere, John is not that good at hiding things._

“Sherlock!”

He is desperate now, trying to start a row, but John’s voice is full of kindness and calm, like he is trying to pacify a child who wants to go to the theme park in the dead of winter.

“Tell me where they are! Please, just tell me!”

He realises he is begging. Might as well. He has already hit bottom.

“Please.”

John just shakes his head.

“I’ll let you know next week’s lottery numbers.”

John just chuckles.

“It was worth a try.”

_Again_. Damn that he had to get them wrong last time.

He lunges to the fireplace but there is nothing, not even crumbs in his Persian slipper. He throws the shoe over his shoulder towards the door and almost hits Mrs Hudson with it.

“What have you done with my cigarettes?”

She is pretending not to know, she is in on it with John.

Sherlock is livid. He needs a cigarette or a case or his head will explode.

So he sinks lower than usual: he insults Mrs Hudson and she runs away, banging her door shut so that the mirror in the hall shakes.

“What the bloody hell was that?”

Ah, now John is angry too. Seems like he will be getting his row in the end.

Insulting John never gets him anywhere, only makes him feel worse about himself.

Thankfully the doorbell rings before things can get really ugly and he pounds to his room to change into a suit while John lets their visitor in. When he returns, there is a young man waiting in John’s chair, looking timid and dead tired, saying,

“Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.”

And suddenly, they have a case.

 

 

\\\

It is a wonderful case. Full of interesting witnesses, a 20-year-old murder, a dark moor and a monster of a dog Sherlock does not believe exists at first. He has trained himself only to believe in what he sees and not to let feelings interfere with his work.

Especially not those of long ago.

But he can’t help a startled retreat and a silent gasp as he sees the clay model of the enormous footprint Fletcher, the boy running the tourist walks, pulls out from his bag. A little boy at the back of his mind screams for him to run, run and hide. He doesn’t let it show, only pulls out he fifty pounds he lost in the made-up bet with Fletcher’s condescending smile hovering over him like a spotlight. John pockets his winnings, finishes his beer and follows Sherlock to the parking lot.

 

 

He should have known better. He should have known never to take a case that would make old memories rise to the surface, make everything that he buried flare up again and reduce him to a shivering mess.

He sits in front of the fireplace at the inn, fingers hovering over his lips, trying to collect himself, to convince himself that what he saw wasn’t real.

He flexes his fingers and squeezes them into fists as John walks into the room and sits down in the opposite chair. Listening to him prattle about the case, about the possible reasons that could make their client act like this, Sherlock only wants to get on his knees in front of him and bury his face against his stomach.

 

 

He remembers yelling. There’s not much he remembers about the actual details of the case, but he remembers the yelling, bellowing, his anger towards John, towards _John_ , the one person who has never made him actually angry. Not even when he binned a whole human liver with a decease Sherlock had never seen before and which Molly was going to report but, as usual, promised to postpone the little detail while Sherlock ran home with the thing, inspected every piece of it under his microscope, took samples, did everything he could with it, last of which made the fire alarm blare on with such a force John heard it from the end of the street and ran in, shopping bags banging against his legs.

He had come in, seen Sherlock with his eyebrows singed off, his face black and his hair a sooty mess.

He had laughed.

He had laughed so loud and long he had to lean against the doorframe for support.

Sherlock had let out a little snort at that. He guessed he must have looked pretty funny.

He didn’t find it amusing a bit later when he opened the fridge door and couldn’t find the liver.

It must have been partly due to his missing eyebrows that he was not in as good a mood as he had been the day before, but the bold spots above his lashes really didn’t help.

So he yelled at John a bit, demanding to have his liver back, and when John discovered that the reason he wanted it returned was an unknown decease that could hypothetically prove fatal to half the population of London, he had begun to yell. Louder and definitely more high-pitched than Sherlock.

He soon realised it was bin day and if he didn’t hurry he would have to look for the dangerously infectious liver from the tip. Probably with a hazmat suit on.

He disappeared fast through the door and Sherlock knew he would never see his liver again. He would have run after John but his lack of eyebrows made him too self-conscious of his appearance and instead he stayed home to set fire to John’s chair.

John came home and yelled again, but not for long and not very loud. Sherlock’s eyebrows grew back and he returned to Bart’s, only to find out that Molly (blushing and stammering) had been ordered (by John) to cut him off from anything more dangerous than a toenail for a month.

 

He didn’t get angry even then. He only got frustrated and jumpy, went and stabbed a pig a couple of times, and suddenly there was a case. A case which made him angry, made him say things he didn’t mean, and which made John storm out from the restaurant.

 

He isn’t angry now. He is scared. He is so scared the glass full of whisky shakes in his hand and he whimpers unintentionally. The patrons in the restaurant have resumed their meals after his little outburst ( _yelling at John, you yelled at_ John) and the clattering of the crockery and the chatter is making his teeth ache. He tries not to think of what he saw, _the gigantic hound_ , but of John and how to make it up to him.

 

At that moment, Louise Mortimer walks in and orders herself a glass of white. Henry’s therapist. Henry’s very attractive therapist.

Sneaking into the bar, hiding his phone discreetly between his palms, he takes a quick photo of her before dashing out to type a text to John. He knows how to play him. Give him a pretty tail to chase and he’ll forget all the hurt in the world, happy to show off his talent in his natural habitat.

Extreme jealousy hits him a mere second after he has pressed sent. He looks at the picture of her, taken from behind one of the ridiculous large barrels that used to store wine or beer but now serve as a place for the patrons to lower their glasses on while chatting each other up in the dim candle light.

Louise Mortimer does not need dim candle light to hide herself. Louise Mortimer would be attractive in bright sunshine or under blaring fluorescent lamps.

He waits until he sees John return to the bar, spot Louise Mortimer and steer towards her with prominent ease in his step and a bottle of white wine under his arm. When Sherlock sees her smile at him, he turns around and walks upstairs to their room.

John comes in an hour later, clearly more sober than Sherlock would have predicted and definitely angrier than when they last spoke. It’s clear from his gait that nothing went according to plan, but Sherlock only feels immensely happy that in the morning John will be waking up with him and not next to Louise Mortimer.

He pretends to sleep, adds a slight snore to make it more convincing, all the while listening to John shuffle about, go to the bathroom and come back, undress. Sherlock stifles his desire to peek. He feels that would be crossing quite a vast boundary even if John wouldn’t notice.

So he continues to fake snore ( _add some drool, make it more believable_ ) while John climbs in his bed, turns off the lamp and the room lunges into darkness.

 

 

He is up long before John, having woken up to dreams about wide open jaws and bloody teeth all night, dressed and walking across the moor before the sun has even come up. He climbs to stand on one of the rocky hills that allows him a perfect view across the moor, to the village, Baskerville and the minefield.

And Dewer’s Hollow.

The devil’s dwelling place.

His coat billows behind him in the wind, like a huge sail or a cape. He likes the feeling. It’s a secret pleasure of his, to close his eyes and pretend he is Superman, invincible and undamaged.

It helps him concentrate. Helps him remember that there is always a logical explanation for everything. And that the explanation to what he saw last night will most likely be found from Henry’s kitchen.

 

 

Stolen sugar in his pocket, he walks back to the inn, spotting John’s slumped figure ( _he changed into his green coat_ ), sitting on the steps of one of the bigger memorials commemorating who-knows-what long gone hero. He looks up, sees Sherlock, and is instantly on his feet.

_Break the ice_.

He trails behind John, dodging between the graves, trying to keep his tone neutral, to make John laugh, casting his eyes down when he fails.

He stares at the back of John’s head, going through every possible way to make it better.

_I’ll tell you about the cocaine. I’ll tell you what you don’t know, that I never did it because it made my head feel empty, not really, I did it to forget. You’d say it’s the same thing, but it isn’t. I wanted to damage my nerves, to forget completely. But I never succeeded._

_I’ll tell you about when I was six. My favourite book was Peter Pan and I wanted to be like Hook. I didn’t like Peter, he reminded me too much of myself. Mycroft sneaked me in to see_ Yellowbeard _five times in two weeks, just because I asked him to._

_I’ll tell you about the wolf._

_No, stop it! That’s too far!_

_I’ll tell you anything, but not that. I’ll tell you anything you want, but just look at me!_

He hates cemeteries. He hasn’t visited one since he went to his mother’s grave the day after her funeral. (Best way to make sure she was actually dead, preferable to actually seeing her dead body in the coffin or on the slab. Always the chance she might open her eyes.) He had spent the previous day and night locked away in his room, head blissfully empty thanks to the cocaine he had procured for the occasion, right after the doctor had walked out of their mother’s hospital room to the hallway where he and Mycroft had been waiting and had informed them, his whole appearance like the white walls of the hospital, that their mother had passed. That’s how Sherlock saw it, the neutral, plastic-like condolences from the doctor who had taken care of their dying mother for months.

He had turned and walked out while Mycroft stayed to give instructions on moving their mother to the morgue and arranging a funeral home to come pick her up.

So died the woman who had taught Sherlock that feelings were futile because they made you weak and friends were unnecessary unless you needed more people around you to tell you how much they hated you.

‘Friends’ and ‘feelings’. The two f-words.

She never had friends herself, just people she considered worth her time and energy, people with high social status or just enough money to be important. She made sure Mycroft never had any friends either, he was to concentrate on his studies. Sherlock’s friends were a lesser evil, as long as he concentrated on being miserable enough to please her.

He thinks about the cruel, friendless woman he swore he would never be like, looks at John’s retreating back, a lump rising in his throat, and says the only other true thing he can think of at the moment.

“I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one.”

It doesn’t sound too much like _I love you_ , but he is hoping it will make John stop, make him turn back and return, not make him walk even further away to the parking lot and disappear behind the bushed _no wait_ oh John _fantastic BRILLIANT John I’ve got it now!_

 

 

 

In the car back to Baskerville, he dares a question he knows will make John’s shoulders even stiffer. Treading on very, very dangerous soil, he asks what went wrong with Louise Mortimer.

“Why? You feeling bad that I didn’t get the information you needed and failed miserably at what is apparently the only way I am useful to you?”

He knew it would sting. But he is focused on the case again after a short relapse and manages to keep his voice cool, to explain to John that while he is important to him in more ways than just being able to use his personal charms to get rumours out of attractive women, he is genuinely interested in hearing how his evening went.

John squints at him, trying to determine whether he is actually interested or messing about.

“That bloke from Baskerville, Doctor Frankland. Showed up a bit sloshed and started talking about you and how I’m your live-in PA. Emphasis on the live-in.”

Sherlock almost crashes the car there and then, not because of the effect of the conclusion Doctor Frankland – like many others before him – has erroneously come to and the innuendo he has made, but because now he finally has a suspect.

He was always too nice, Bob Frankland was.

 

 

The next day on the train back to London, hiding behind his phone Sherlock peers at John’s sleeping form on the seat opposite. He is snoring lightly, head thrown back uncomfortably, but he is relaxed enough to sleep in public, trusting enough to have accepted the cup of horrendous tea Sherlock bought him on the train (and drinking it without pointedly inspecting the Styrofoam cup for possible signs of poisoning before taking a sip), comfortable enough to have giggled into his tea when Sherlock started deducing the other passengers in the carriage.

Sherlock smiles. Never mind the poisoning and scaring him to death, at least for once it has not been him who has wrecked a possible relationship for John, at least not directly, and he is vaguely thankful to the late Bob Frankland.

 

 

But before this comes the laboratory, locking John in with an imaginary hound and scaring him to death.

He is absorbed in the game at this point, too giddy to see anything else, too happy that he is doing experiments again, but somewhere at the back of his head he feels ill, hates himself for doing this to John. He has to remind himself there is no one else. He can’t test the sugar on Henry, he’s already seen the hound, has probably been exposed to the sugar for years. And this would break him, darkened room, nowhere to hide from your childhood nightmare.

_“It was a wolf!”_

His own monster under the bed, his own words echoed in Henry’s first visit.

John is strong. He will recover.

But he must never know.

 

So he locks John in, blares the recording of the snarls through the speakers, listens to John’s horrified whispers from the other end of the line.

And then it all really goes to hell.

 

That night, they stay at Henry’s. John doesn’t take no for an answer, even though anyone can see that this, the night both the dog and the real source of Henry’s nightmares are dead, he will sleep more soundly than he has in a long while.

But John insists, and Sherlock finds himself in one of the bedrooms of Henry’s massive house, trying to listen to John sleeping in the room next to his. Henry had offered them a bigger room across the hall, having arrived to the same conclusion Bob Frankland and practically everyone else before him had.

John had said no so forcefully both Henry and Sherlock had startled.

Sherlock touches the wall above his head, hoping that on the other side of it John is sleeping soundly and without nightmares of men exploding to pieces over mines or IEDs.

The next morning they drive back to the inn to get their luggage and eat a hearty breakfast the innkeepers insist they have, the least they can do after what happened on the moor. Sherlock goes in to get them tea, which John takes. Which he almost drinks.

Then he stops.

And begins to talk about the sugar, realisation dawning like a lightbulb over his head.

Then there are angry hissing words, an insult (slight one) from him, a confirmation on John’s part that yes, Sherlock Holmes can get it wrong, a promise that John will be fine once he has excreted the drug, and a joke that makes Sherlock smile and laugh, that makes him genuinely happy.

He goes to get them more tea and when he returns John has finished his breakfast, moves past him with a sharp “We’re gonna miss the train”, and walks away. Sherlock lowers the teas down on the table so forcefully that the hot water sloshes over the rim and runs after him.

On the parking lot, checking the weather report from his phone, John notes that they might get back to London before it starts pouring rain.

Sherlock gapes.

John’s tone is light. Anyone would say he is his normal self, but not Sherlock.

_But you made a joke! You made a joke about excrements!_

He manages until they have boarded the train, until they are moving across the moor and John has been staring out of the window for fifteen minutes, the silence between them stretching and stretching and stretching and he must still have some of the drug in his system because suddenly he is talking.

“I was afraid of wolves as a child.”

John blinks like he has forgotten Sherlock is there.

“We went to the zoo on a school trip when I was ten. Some of the boys cornered me by the wolf cages, climbed on the fence and threw me in.”

His hands are shaking.

“They all blamed me. The teacher, the staff. I didn’t dare tell them about the other boys and they thought right away that I had climbed there myself. It was the first time my mother came to pick me up from anything. Slapped me right there by the gates in front of my whole class.”

His tone has stayed cold, but there’s a sting in his words he doesn’t want John to hear.

He can’t stop it.

“The usual punishment followed: locked in the attic for a few hours and to bed without dinner.”

“What were their names?”

Sherlock starts.

“Why?”

“Easier to track them down when I don’t have to go through all the people in your class. I have some very artistic torture methods in mind.”

Never mind his tone now, it couldn’t fool anyone. John’s is calm but very, very low and his eyes are suddenly piercing, a shade of deeper blue than they have ever been. His fist is clenched against his thigh but it’s not shaking.

Sherlock wants to cry. He wants to burst out in tears because John is the first person after Mycroft to defend him. He wants John to see he is human, not like his mother. Crying would make him closer to John and get him further away from his mother.

But he doesn’t cry. And John doesn’t know.

 

There is a courier from the butcher’s waiting for them, Mrs Hudson staring in horror at the bags of butchered pig she is supposed to accept into her house. She throws her hands in the air and stomps back in, followed by profusely apologising John, while Sherlock stays to sign the delivery and watch over as the men carry what is left of the dead pig into their kitchen. Sherlock inspects the parcels with interest. The butcher has packed everything neatly in their own parcels, the innards and meat carefully labelled.

John ascends the stairs and stops to stare. Then he turns on his heels and is out of the door.

He is back an hour later, arms full of shopping bags.

Flour, spices, lard, eggs, even gelatine leaves, something Sherlock has never seen in their kitchen before.

“Used the fifty quid you lost me.”

John bins everything in the fridge, then begins to unpack the shopping. There’s milk and yoghurt, beans, _strawberries_ (Sherlock’s mouth waters), and beer.

“That was a made-up bet. And you could always have asked me if you were short on cash.”

“Wasn’t. And you wouldn’t have lent me any for food. At least not this much.”

Sherlock peeks into the last bag. _A cake tin?_

“You think I’m that particular about how I spend my money?” he takes the tin and hands it to John.

“No. I think you’re that particular when it comes to pork pie and when you haven’t eaten in two days.”

They have the strawberries for dessert. Sprinkled with sugar and whipped cream. Sherlock eats until he feels the seam of his trousers cannot stretch any more without bursting. John takes the last swig from his beer and goes to make them tea.

 

 

That night, Sherlock stands in the doorway of John’s room, watches him sleep, breathing even and undisturbed even by the hollow creak of the door hinges.

He looks small, like he has shrunk down in his sleep, the white of his tee translucent in the moonlight. There’s a full moon, the night of werewolves, and Sherlock can’t sleep.

He stands in the doorway, looks at the tiny man sleeping the sleep of the undisturbed, a wolf trapped in barely a 170 centimetres of bullterrier, ready to bite your head off when threatened.

He imagines himself next to John in the bed, his limbs sticking out from under the duvet, his frame lean and sinewy like a sighthound.

Suitable name.

He could fit his body so perfectly next to John’s. He could wrap himself around him, protect him from all sides.

Lost in thought, he doesn’t realise that John’s slight snores have stopped. He doesn’t notice the change in the rhythm of his breathing, just watches the rise and fall of his back, thinks,

_We work, somehow._

Mycroft phones the next day. The only reason Sherlock goes is that now he owes him. A bit.

“We had to let him go.”

_Had to_ is an entirely wrong expression when they both know why Mycroft has let the most insane man on the planet walk free from the torture cell he locked him in two weeks earlier.

They have to start planning, always one step ahead, that’s their motto, and this time it is even more vital they know exactly where Moriarty is and what he will do. Lots of paperwork.

“He has you figured out better than you think.”

Sherlock’s head snaps up.

“John. He doesn’t think you are unable to love.”

_I imagine John Watson thinks love is a mystery to me_.

Damn that Mycroft had to be there.

They look at each other for moment, then Mycroft sighs and goes back to the papers.

Sherlock looks at his brother, his lean back and sharp face.

He looks so much like their father did at his age. If the black and white photos are anything to go by. But Sherlock is sure Mycroft even has his hair.

He considers asking Mycroft if he actually loved their mother. If he felt any emotion but respect and dread towards the woman who pampered him and provided him with everything he could hope for while his younger brother by seven years barely warranted enough attention to get a glancing look when the nanny dragged him into the room to tell her he had bitten one of his playmates.

He wants to know if he ever hated her, at least after she separated them to the opposite sides of the house, locked the nursery at night to make sure Sherlock didn’t escape. There was no need, he always picked the lock. Mycroft had taught him how. The first night in the new nursery, the walls still smelling of paint and the coldness creeping into his bed, Mycroft had sneaked to his door, picked the lock in seconds and spent the rest of the night teaching Sherlock so that he would not have to spend his nights alone in the wing of the house that was only used as a storage space. Making sure to wake up early enough to escort Sherlock back to his room before the nanny woke up and came to fetch him, he then returned to his own room, knowing that their mother never bothered his mornings.

“I may have to ask you for something soon.”

Mycroft looks up.

“Anything, Sherlock. You know that.”

Sherlock rises to go and Mycroft rings for the car.

He almost says it then. For a moment he is certain he can’t bring himself to stop his little brother from walking out without saying it. Remembers him, ten years old, too afraid to sleep alone because of the monsters under his bed and the ones in his classroom. And now another one lurking in the streets of his favourite city, his sanctuary and his home.

He wants to apologise for it all, everything that has happened and everything that is going to happen, but can’t bring himself to speak before Sherlock’s coat has disappeared round the corner.

He’ll have to ask John to do it.


	6. Accidents Waiting to Happen

Sherlock presses his forehead against the door and breathes in. Behind the wood, the shower is turned on, the water starts running, the room fills with steam, and Sherlock pretends he can hear John’s bathrobe hit the floor (he knows John, overly meticulous, always hangs up his bathrobe before climbing in the shower, but it would be more dramatic this way, John’s bathrobe dropping to the floor in a pile of cotton, revealing everything in one smooth motion, his legs, torso, abdomen, shoulders, the scar the scar _the scar he is not allowed to see_ ), creak of the tub and John splashing about.

John is showering, and Sherlock presses his face against the door and pretends he is just a little bit closer.

When the bathroom door opens releasing a wave of steam and John, red-faced, clean-shaven and huffing out a satisfied breath of air, Sherlock is securely back at the kitchen table, eyes glued to the microscope. With enormous amount of willpower, he manages not to glance up as John walks past him, brushing against him accidentally as he rubs his hair dry, blinded momentarily by the towel thrown over his head.

 

 

Every morning once John has disappeared into the bathroom with his robe on and his towel thrown over his shoulder, Sherlock stands behind the door, presses his head against the wood and listens.

 

 

On a morning, Mycroft phones with a case. In order to avoid his brother, Sherlock decides it is best to run out of the flat as fast as possible and hide at the Yard until Mycroft gets the message.

He scribbles a quick note on a piece of paper and puts it in the RAMC mug for John to find. When he returns later that night, John is sitting in his chair. He lifts his head when Sherlock storms in.

“I had inky tea this morning.”

_  
Things that are not good: ruining John’s morning tea._

  
But John is smiling, that’s confusing.

_  
Things that are good: John’s smile._

  
Oh, wait. He already has that.

John shows him a blue and white ball of mush that used to be his note and over which he poured boiling water in the hopes of having Earl Grey with his breakfast. Not Uniball Eye UB157.

It is hard not to laugh at the image of John finding the note from the bottom of his mug after he had finished his tea and putting his limited deduction abilities to use, realising Sherlock actually tried to inform him about his movements, smiling when he understood he was not left behind but with a message conveying Sherlock thought about him before he left.

Since in Sherlock’s world of logic John’s ideal morning is tea ( _milk, no sugar_ ) times the amount of caffeine needed to overcome the nightmares of the previous night which equals at least four cups based on the tossing and turning Sherlock has heard through his bedroom ceiling, it made perfect sense that John would use his favourite mug first thing in the morning and find the note inside. It didn’t cross his mind that John half asleep would probably not check for pieces of paper inside the crockery.

John makes two mugs of pulp free tea and sits down at the table to listen Sherlock talk about his day. There has not been a case (which is bad), but there hasn’t been Mycroft either (which is good).

He can continue to dodge the boring case of another lost civil servant or something equally dull for a while longer.

 

\\\

Sherlock reads John’s blog when he doesn’t notice. Even though he leaves snarky comments to tell everyone he couldn’t care less, he actually spends a considerable amount of time poring over every word. He reads John’s notes on the Baskerville case especially hard, analysing every tone, every shift in his storytelling to find out how much others will gather from it about what happened in Dartmoor, how much John himself understood about it.

_Maybe the fear and doubt he’d felt, and maybe his experiences with Irene Adler, had humanised him?_

_He is only human, after all._

It sends a shiver down his spine, the fact that John sees him as flesh and bone and not just an automaton. It should bother him, make him angry. _Feelings_ , the despicable word that it is, should not be associated with him, should not be in the same sentence with his name. But there it is. Verbatim to what he himself said to John at the graveyard. _Fear_ and _doubt_.

Except John in his anger had used the other, perhaps more demeaning word.

 _Sherlock Holmes got scared_.

He had used his full name to distance himself from him, to refer to him as an almighty entity that couldn’t be touched by human emotions.

But here, for all to see, he says _Sherlock_ and _fear_. Like he is a child again, scared to death of the monsters under his bed.

And that it was all right to be so, all right to be afraid.

 

He leaves a comment on the blog criticising John’s inability to come up with better adjectives. He hears John’s phone bling in the kitchen, a ruffle of fabric and John’s amused huff as he reads Sherlock’s comment.

Sherlock wishes he could see his smile.

 

 

\\\  
He should list all of John’s smiles on a separate sheet.

The crooked half one he gives when someone tells a joke he finds funny.

The one when he looks like he is just about to laugh, mouth slightly open, marks of age round his eyes.

_He has so many of those marks, and they are all from smiling._

_(Are any of them there because of me?)_

He should list John’s laughs, too.

The belly laughter.

The hiccoughing snort when he inhales his drink.

The giggle.

He hasn’t heard the giggle since Buckingham Palace and the ashtray.

He plans to try wearing the sheet again, just to see if John would remember and laugh.

 

 

\\\

He knows he can’t dodge it forever. It will all change, the quiet mornings with John in the shower, his ear pressed against the wood. Lazy Sundays of bickering, takeaway and John begging Lestrade for cold cases. John tapping away on his laptop, writing up their newest case.

 _Their_. Not _Sherlock’s_. _Their_.

Somehow, they have become an entity.

Sherlock tries to remember all the times he has referred to John and him as _we_. How many times anyone has used a _you_ and meant both of them.

Every time Lestrade indicates he needs a medical opinion, the little comment at the end telling him that John would enjoy this one as a medical man.

Every time Mrs Hudson scolds them about the condition of the kitchen. Or the sitting room. Or bathroom.

Every time Sally Donovan uses the term with slightly less of a sneer in her voice, something else lurking behind her words. Something deeper, sharper, _worried_.

Worry for John.

So she still hasn’t given up, trying to make him leave Baker Street, stay away from the danger that is Sherlock Holmes.

She still has not seen what John truly is. Behind the shell of comfy jumpers and military rest he is as addicted to danger and blood and violent situations as Sherlock is.

Sherlock can see why she does not believe that about John. John with his idiotic choices of clothing, softly spoken words and small stature is the perfect image of _compact_ and _comfortable_. John with his shirt sleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in warm water, foam between his fingers, a dishbrush in hand, Sunday afternoon filling the whole flat, the sun always warmer and somehow brighter then than any other time of the day.

This is how he wants to remember John. Taking care of their lives, the parts that actually make them meaningful, the things that make 221B a home instead of headquarters or storage for all of Sherlock's research material, thus making their lives a unity. He could empty the house of everything else but John and still have all the answers there.

John senses him staring, he always does, and turns to look.

“What?” he asks gently, and his voice is sleepy, barely used, soft like his hair.

He has taken a nap on the sofa. A long one. It has made his hair stand up from the back.

Always like that, always, always like Sherlock’s staring does not make him uncomfortable but interested in where it is he has gotten himself lost inside his over-sized brain again.

His hair has grown over its military cut again, a trim long overdue, and Sherlock couldn’t be happier. It makes John look even softer and at the same time more powerful than with the standard soldier’s haircut he only keeps for convenience’s sake.

John has forgotten to comb it this morning, and when he brushes his arm against his forehead, the fringe sticks up with suds stuck to it.

Sherlock imagines all the things John would say or do if he was suddenly pushed against the sink or dragged to the living room and pinned against the wallpaper with the print of the skull grinning on his left and the smiley face on his right.

He would blush, that’s for sure. He always does when Sherlock suggests something he deems inappropriate.

He might yell, or only stutter. He might look away and stare at his feet until Sherlock let him go.

But there is such gentleness in his eyes now that tells Sherlock he would not leave. Not anymore. Perhaps a year ago. 13 months, 2 weeks and four days. That’s how long it has been since John killed a man for him and turned to look him in the eye as if in just 24 hours he has understood how to tread the ground round Sherlock. Gentle reminders of politeness, the occasional night spent on the sofa at Sarah’s or Mike’s or just a few hours in a pub with Lestrade, but never leave to not return.

Sherlock contemplates what could be so grave and life-changing John would walk out of the door once and for all. When John turns to look at him again and only smiles, doesn’t flinch under the continuing scrutiny, he hopes dearly there is nothing that will take that smile away from him.

_Please don’t ever leave me_ _._

He thinks of the words now more than ever before. They appear like a neon sign over John after he almost takes a bullet in the head, or pop up in a puff of white smoke in good old Arial, the font John uses on his blog and which Sherlock detests (“It’s like you are writing the bloody thing for people with visual impairment!”), or are stamped repeatedly on Sherlock’s brain and heart when he looks at John in situations like this, performing regular, everyday tasks that keep their household together and make John look so beautiful and Sherlock feel so safe he feels like he will need a tank of extra oxygen.

The same happens every time John exits the shower, but for a completely different reason. Sherlock has named it Lust, never having felt it, never having spared any thought to it, he now experiences the symptoms on a regular basis. Every morning at 8:45 John emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, dries his hair on a towel and makes Sherlock’s blood sing in his veins.

He doesn’t look up, not when his phone goes off, when John informs him offhandedly about it, when it goes off again, nor when John comes to stand next to him, the phone in his extended hand. Only John’s breathless ( _scared?_ ) exclamation makes him look up.

“He’s back.”

No more quiet mornings after that.

 

 

\\\

The trial is a farce. Obviously Moriarty has scared the jury to death before the thing even had the chance to start.

Or maybe he took his time, had some fun with the ones with families by waiting until they were away from home, alone in a hotel room, just enjoying a little peace after a long day.

He gives his contribution to the circus by giving out a few truths about the judge and is escorted out of the courtroom. John bails him out, a slightly defeated look on his face, but he is in the game. He knows what’s going on.

And since Sherlock now has no business being in or outside the courthouse, John sits through the rest of the trial and brings back news of the proceedings.

Then comes the day Sherlock has been expecting since the beginning. His phone rings and John’s voice, suddenly so far away, tells him that the jury has declared Moriarty not guilty.

“You know he’s coming after you. Just stay put, I’ll be there…”

He cuts off the call, puts the kettle on and takes out his violin.

It is easier to see Moriarty on his doorstep while thinking on the words, knowing that John is coming home, will be back any minute.

But not before Moriarty has walked out again and gone into hiding.

They sit and drink tea, the perfect image of British hospitality. Anyone could be fooled.

Even the insults and threats are like from any average Christmas dinner.

Doesn’t make it any easier when the topic moves on from them and Moriarty’s plan to a direction Sherlock does not want it to go.

“Aren’t ordinary people adorable? Well, you should know, you have John.”

_In what sense of the word do I actually have him?_

Moriarty’s gaze travels up to stare at the ceiling.

“I wonder if I should come by one day to install some kind of sound system? Oh, the things I might hear.”

“Why are you doing this?” Sherlock breathes out.

The light catches Moriarty’s eyes when he turns his head. For a second they look blinding, glowing like they are all white.

“It will be such fun to watch you burn. Too bad it has to end eventually, since there won’t be an infinite amount of things to _burn_. But enough, I’d say, for a moment of amusement.”

His eyes roam over Sherlock.

“I wonder where I should start.”

He rests his thumb against his bottom lip and licks it.

“The heart is usually the last to go, all those emotions brought to surface, love, loss, suffering. Delicious noises beaten out of a husband when you torture his wife and children. Juicy, juicy sobs when you cut their throats. It will be even more interesting with you, Sherlock, since your heart is in a special place. It will be interesting to see if you’ll bleed as well when I stick a screwdriver into John Watson’s pancreas.”

The tip of the thumb slides from one incisor to the other. The sharp front teeth catch it and bite down.

“I can’t wait to burn the heart out of you.”

 

 

John comes home to an empty flat, the two teacups still sitting on the coffee table, the tea in the pot still warm.

 

 

Sherlock goes to Mycroft. He has given up on pretending his brother will not help him when he truly needs help.

In his club room, Mycroft is sitting in his chair with a glass of whiskey the colour of pure amber, _Tristan und Isolde_ streaming from his top-of-the-range stereos.

 _Liebesto_ _d._

Mostly applied to lovers who kill themselves because they can’t be with the person they love. To be united in death. Their love consummated in eternal sleep.

He thinks about the first time he was able to admit it to himself, on his hands and knees on the Persian rug in Mycroft’s office, tears dotting the royal pattern, the mirror reflecting each jagged movement, each torn emotion, and he had no way of escaping it.

Standing in Mycroft’s office, his hands deep in his coat pockets, planning what to do, how to survive, how to make sure John survives.

For two months he is constantly thinking about Mycroft’s Machiavellian idea of the end justifying the means. He tries to convince himself it is the best excuse to drag John against him the moment he returns from his own trip to Mycroft’s. Because at the moment every chance might be his last.

Two months later, and he is still wired about Moriarty’s visit, hands squeezing into fists harder than usual after every snide remark from Sally, last of which makes him stop on the landing before walking out.

“The Reichenbach hero.”

John is no different from him. Even with kidnapped children on the agenda, his thoughts are first and foremost on Sherlock, his hands showing all the emotions that go through him the moment Sally opens her mouth and release when they leave the flat.

 

Collecting samples from the crime scene, travelling to Bart's, inspecting crumbs of broken wood under the microscope Sherlock thinks about his visit to the Diogenes, his brother's calm face, his eyes like two icebergs, void of any emotion until Sherlock tells him what he needs.

 

 _Ertrinken,_ _versinken, unbewußt, höchste Lust!_

 

Sherlock hopes it will not come to that. John crouching over him while his brains leak out, or his blood bubble out of his intestines, or every bone in his body broken, or his hair wet from the Thames water and skin covered in seaweed. Or in the worst case scenario, everything all at once.

Or yet even worse, he himself crouching over John. Pushed down from a high building, bullet finally having pierced through something more important than shoulder muscle, eyes filled with flies from weeks of being hidden in someone’s cellar.

 

He will do anything to keep John safe. If that is what is at the end of the road, then it is definitely worth fighting for, no matter how.

But he needs to stop thinking, needs to concentrate, eyes back to the microscope. He is of no use to anyone if he sits here, thinking what might happen if he doesn’t catch Moriarty. What will happen to the ambassador’s two children or the next victim. Himself. John.

He glances up when John walks back into the room.

_John is safe._

Molly’s voice disturbs him.

“You’re a bit like my dad. He’s dead.”

_Well, isn’t that nice._

“Sorry, I didn’t mean ---“

He tells her there is no need to make small talk, she’s not very good at it.

“When he was dying he was always cheerful, he was lovely, except when he thought no one could see. I saw him once. He looked sad.”

“Molly…”

“You look sad. When you think he can’t see you.”

Sherlock glances over his microscope again. John is looking at the crime scene photos, he has not heard. He does that face, that angry/musing face that fits him so well. He has the perfect lips for it.

_I wonder what face he would make if he knew I was dying._

The stoic calm emitting from Molly makes him turn to her. She is like this sometimes, ready to stand her ground for as long as it takes for Sherlock to pay attention to her. She has been doing it for years now, she is not going to stop. She is ready to get to the bottom of this, carve Sherlock’s brains out if it will make him talk about what is going on inside his head.

“Are you okay?” she asks, interrupting him before he can even begin to lie. “And don’t just say you are if you don’t mean it, because I know what it means, looking sad when you think no one can see.”

_That they are dying, is that it?_

“You can see me,” he offers.

“I don’t count.”

God, that smile breaks his heart.

“What I’m trying to say is that if there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me. No, I just mean…”

She is back to her muttering, blabbering, stammering, and Sherlock wants to touch her, for the first time since Christmas he remembers what Molly truly is.

“I mean if there’s anything you need, it’s fine.”

_A friend._

He hasn’t heard that for so long, an offer for help.

John said it at the time of the Carl Powers case, and after that it’s been self-evident that he solves the cases as much as Sherlock does.

Before that it was him who asked for it. Begged John to help him when it seemed like John would leave him to hunt the Chinese gangsters alone in order to “get off” with Sarah.

He has not said it after that, hasn’t dared. Not after the response he got then. Even now when he apparently looks like he is dying he cannot ask John to help him.

 

 

It’s true, though. He has been dying for a long time. Ever since he started holding Mycroft’s hand on their walks home from school, tears hidden from the other boys tossing gum in his hair between classes. Mycroft saw his sadness and tried to help, did everything Mummy and Daddy didn’t and in the end he hid his sorrow from him as well, hid behind his monster of a brain, perhaps not as big and full of knowledge as Mycroft’s, but more consuming.

Drugs controlled it, but never shut it down completely. He tried, in the back of his head the constant hope that any time it could be too much, that overdose would click a switch inside his head and the lights would go out.

He was never careful, always disappointed when he woke up the next morning, shivering and nauseous, but alive. And brain still in place, ready to tear him apart when he had just put himself together again.

He had daydreams about losing his mind, becoming a drooling vegetable who couldn’t even aspire to the possibility of being ordinary. There was no escaping it. His brain would always be gnawing at him, demanding for more data to chew on.

There are people who call him crazy. They think differently about those words than he does. For him, they are a salvation, a benediction, _liberty in death_. To them it’s the same as ‘freak’ or ‘psychopath’, the worst thing in their book.

He reads of people who suffer from amnesia that wipes their memory clean every 10 seconds. How he would love that, not to be able to remember anything new, not to be able to remember people you hate, people who hate you.

People you love, people who love you.

He looks at John, studying the pile of photos at the table.

 

_John is safe._

 

He was dying, and John saved his life. He would have swallowed the pill, didn’t even know if he was right or wrong, it didn’t matter. There was nothing to live for anymore.

_“Are you okay?”_

No one asks him that. No one even uses the more formal, distant version: “How are you?”

No one really cares.

But John asks it constantly. Just like with his praises, he has used every possible way in the English language to check how he is doing, how he is _feeling_.

He wonders what John would have done if he had told him the same thing he tells Molly in the darkened lab after he has realised the worst plan he and Mycroft could come up with is the only way out.

“I think I’m going to die.”

Then. Someone else’s voice at the back of his head.

 

_“You’re a dead man walking.”_

_“So are you!”_

_Takes one to know one._

In the end it is him who cannot keep the promise of never leaving.

 

 

\\\

He’s been going too fast, getting too cocky, too exposed. Once again, the crash is inevitable. Hitting the breaks won’t have any effect, he won’t be able to avoid the impact of what Moriarty has in store for him.

The road is closed, now it’s all dead ends in front of him. No alternative routes.

He is already running from everyone else, why not from John. So he leaves him standing alone in the middle of the road and goes to see Molly. She doesn’t ask unnecessary questions, only the one he needs to hear.

 

 

\\\

“What do you need?”

 

 

\\\

He wonders what he has ever done to deserve her.

 

 

\\\

It is time to perfect the plan. Every detail must be worked out, nothing can go wrong with this. He needs his homeless network, lots of fake blood, and Mycroft.

Knowing John, he has gone to see his brother the moment he has realised who must have given Kitty Riley the information about him. What else are arch enemies for, but to pass on false information to the people you love?

He texts Mycroft who replies with a confirmation that John is sitting in his office.

He promises to lie through his teeth, even though it will only hurt John more. But it will remove the suspicion, make John hate him and return to Sherlock. He needs him back before he can send him away again. Needs him to be able to pretend for the last time that he doesn’t care, that he doesn’t feel.

Sherlock replies with words he has not said to his brother in years.

_Thank you._

The reply arrives a second later.

_I told you, Sherlock. Anything you need._

Mycroft plays his part perfectly and John huffs into Bart’s lab only half an hour later, obviously full of anger, but trying not to let it show.

Sherlock thinks of his brother, the cool and calm exterior, the coldness that seemingly lives in his heart. The warmth of his much larger hand in his, clutching at it securely until they have turned round the corner of the street and the noises of the school yard have died out. Then he would loosen his hold, but he would only release his hand to dig the key from his school bag, then take a hold of it again to lead Sherlock to the kitchen where their afternoon snack was waiting for them.

Mycroft’s warm hand in his, guiding him through the landmines of his childhood.

Warm. Like the skin on the back of John’s neck must be warm now that he has been asleep for several hours, face buried in his arms. His shoulder must be aching. Sherlock tests the deepness of his sleep by walking past him and brushing against his back. That he can sign off as a stagger while pacing and thinking.

John doesn’t wake up, so Sherlock dares to stop behind him and lean closer. He reaches out his fingers to brush at the skin just below the tuft of hair that always sticks up (he has observed). John stirs, and Sherlock snaps his hand away.

But John is still not awake, only buries his face deeper into his arms, revealing even more of his neck as he turns to the left, like he is inviting Sherlock’s fingers to touch.

It’s amazing how his fighting instincts are dulled by exhaustion and the absence of the battlefield with its constant shouting and screaming. Sherlock runs his fingers over John’s neck and temples for several idle minutes, not daring to reach for the notch that is still buried under shirt and cardigan.

When John’s phone wakes him up with its ringing (one of the homeless on the other end lying to him about Mrs Hudson being the victim of a fatal sniper-attack), Sherlock has been sitting in his chair just long enough to calm his breathing, pinching his thigh through his trouser pocket he wills himself not to cry.

Then there is shouting, fully on John’s part, and lying on Sherlock’s, a door banging closed on John’s heels. A silence for a microsecond. Funny how short amount of time it takes to have your heart broken.

Then there’s the familiar binging of his phone and he is grabbing his coat and walking towards the roof where Moriarty is waiting for him.

 

 

\\\

John has shrunken to a dot. It’s easier to do it like this. He couldn’t come down if he wanted to, and even if he could, he wouldn’t want to.

“We’ll just have to do it like this.”

It’s easier to see John only as a tiny dot. Not being able to count his wrinkles and trying to determine the colour of his eyes. He would never climb back up again after staring into those eyes for longer than a second, even with the sniper watching.

So he gives John reasons, harsh words for why he is standing on the ledge, and John gives him hope, and he smiles.

Which is good.

One of the things that are good.

 

Press pause.

He wants to remember this.

 

Save file.

 

Press play.

 

He gives John a last smile to assure him that if anyone could talk Sherlock Holmes off a ledge it would be John Watson. John can’t see it, he’s too far, but Sherlock hopes he feels it, hears it through the phone and remembers it instead of all the horrible things he is saying, has ever said to him.

With a last goodbye, he throws the phone aside and prepares for the dive.

Tears are already blurring his vision and he still closes his eyes as he spreads his arms and falls. He can’t handle it, the expression on John’s face when he dies. John screams his name, he knows he does even though he is too far to actually hear it.

It’s going to haunt him, that voice. For a moment he hopes he would actually be dying so he wouldn’t have to hear it inside his head every second.

 

 

He hits the pavement and waits.

 

 

\\\

Press stop.

 

 

\\\

He goes to see Molly before he leaves.

“I’m sorry I could not be what you wanted me to be.”

She looks terrified.

“What do you mean?”

He goes to her and brushes his finger over her temple.

“Christmas. You had perfume on. It suited you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”

He gathers her into an embrace, his open coat covering her like a blanket, and breathes in the scent that is distinctly Molly, with or without perfumes it’s always been Molly, always there for him, always ready to help, and he has only had horrible things to say to her in return.

Because he didn’t know.

And now he knows how horrible it feels. Living your life in love with someone without them knowing it.

She grasps his arms desperately and when he lets go her eyes are red and she is sniffling violently. He offers her a tissue, kisses her forehead and is out of the door.

For security’s sake, Mycroft has parked at the back. For security and so that Sherlock does not have to see the blood still splattered on the pavement by the front door.

He hides his shaking hands inside his coat pockets and his fingers hit something. He pulls out the squash ball, useless now that he has been declared dead. No need to have it hanging around, no need to make sure that should the occasion rise he could use a simple trick to fool someone else into believing his pulse has stopped.

Dead men have no pulse.

He puts the ball back into his pocket and climbs in the waiting car.

 

 

\\\

Now he is free to look when John doesn’t see. Irene was right, he has known where to look the entire time, just not if he is allowed. Molly said the same, he always looked sad when John didn’t see. Because he wasn’t allowed to show his emotions, not allowed to look at John the way friends never look at each other.

Only the few times when he let it slip. At the pool. At Irene’s with John at gunpoint. On the roof.

 

_It’s time to lose your mind and let the crazy out_

 

He watches John in clubs surrounded by people way younger than him. Sherlock wonders whether the Kesha song beating from the speakers reminds John of Moriarty and the Semtex vest. Apparently not, since he keeps on moving to the music instead of running away as fast as possible. He is not young, bored or pretty. No, he is devastatingly beautiful as well as a good dancer, and the women around him are clearly interested.

 

_Things that are good: no sign of the limp._

_Things that are not good: no sign of the limp._

He took it away. It's his to put back.

It’s a sign John is not grieving anymore.

 

_This place’s about to blow_

 

Press record.

Save file.

 

John goes home to sleep for 14 hours, Sherlock goes to Mycroft’s to be flown to Marrakech to fight evil on 3 hours of sleep.

 

 

Sherlock knows other people watch John, too. He thinks it’s only good, there are too many ways to end the pain he clearly is in, too many temptations to resist, so many feelings for just one man. Best to share it.

 

 

Mycroft watches John. He follows him around the city in his cars, steps out sometimes to try and convince John to let him give him a left. In the pouring rain, Mycroft holds the majority of the umbrella over John, and for the first time John does not reward his presence with a rude gesture, but neither does he follow Mycroft into the car.

Sherlock hears about this later and hopes it’s a good sign. If John can forgive Mycroft for selling Sherlock’s life story to Moriarty, maybe he can forgive Sherlock for faking his death as well.

 

 

Mrs Hudson watches John. She lets him stay at Baker Street for as long as she can afford. John does not accept the monthly contributions from Mycroft but always sends them back untouched. In the end, she doesn’t have to ask him to leave. He breaks the news himself and comforts her for going away, hugging her and promising to visit often. He does, and they never speak of Sherlock.

Sherlock knows this because Mycroft has bugged one of the legs of Mrs Hudson’s kitchen table. He has promised to turn it on only when John visits.

 

 

Harriet Watson watches John. There’s not much that she can see through the haze of her intoxication or yesterday’s hangover she is trying to relieve with a new bottle of vodka, least of all the man ripped apart by sorrow sitting in front of her.

Sherlock hates her for not being there for her brother.

 

 

Lestrade watches John. At first, he does not invite him to crime scenes because he is afraid it might bring back memories and make John break down in front of all the people that still believe Sherlock was a fraud. Then Lestrade decides it does no one any good to treat John like a fragile flower and arranges with the chief for John to come to the crime scenes legally to give his medical opinion and takes him to a pub afterwards.

Sherlock is achingly happy about this. He has understood the importance of regular, ordinary-guy-friendship between Lestrade and John and his heart almost bursts with joy when he sees John snort out beer through his nose when Lestrade says something funny Sherlock can’t read from his lips. John’s laugh, every variation of it, is still on the top of his list and this one is definitely the roaring belly laughter directed at crap telly, late night comedy and the raunchy jokes of his friends.

 

 

Press record.

Save file.

 

 

He remembers the other laughs, the giggles, the chuckles, the snorts, the funny hiccoughing sound after John has been laughing for hours and his eyes are watering and he can barely breathe.

 

 

He meets Irene once, in Barcelona. He talks to her the best he can and she deduces the rest.

“I never meant that you are not allowed to be loved, Sherlock,” she says. Her hand, warm and brown from the sun, clasps his.

Warm.

He lets her hold his hand until they reach the hotel.

 

 

He almost uses again, three times. Every time he sees John’s face in front of him just when he is about to pierce the needle through his skin. John never looks disappointed or disgusted, only concerned and sad.

He flushes everything down the toilet, thinks he feels a warm hand on his shoulder and cries with his hands on the toilet seat.

 

 

He dreams and wakes up with the pillowcase wet, sometimes the sheets, always clutching the bedding thinking there is another person in bed with him. He washes the tears away, to look strong, while the stickiness in his trousers constantly reminds him how fucked up he feels, how wrong everything is. It’s a kind of redemption, reminder that his dreams are as close as he can get to John at the moment.

 

 

Mycroft sends him to Helsinki in the middle of winter. The cold and the blizzard clear his head somewhat and he finds a gift shop near his hotel that sells the most stupid little bric-a-brac one can get from their travels to faraway lands. Before he can think it through, he buys John a special kind of tea that smells sweet and comforting. Back at the hotel he thinks about flushing the stuff down the toilet like he did with the drugs, but instead ends up keeping the bag and carries it with him in his suitcase. Every time he opens it, the smell of the tea fills his nostrils and he thinks about John.

 

 

The crash has been looming over him for a long time. It has hovered at the back of his mind ever since he saw John at the graveyard, and he finally breaks down completely during his second year away. Stuck in Dubrovnik for three months, the smell of the tea filling the hotel room he can’t leave making him go crazy with home sickness, he phones Mycroft and breathes his brother’s name to the phone.

_help me help me help me_

Mycroft arrives on the next flight, leaves his governmental duties and takes the chance of the ruse being discovered in order to let his brother cry against his stark white shirt.

He finds the lists by accident while he is sitting on the side of Sherlock’s bed, stroking his hand through the curly hair. He doesn’t find them as much as sees them, staring at him on the bedside table.

Some of them are yellow and crumbled, months, perhaps years old, some are newer, the latest begun only a few days ago.

All of them are filled to the edges with Sherlock’s spidery handwriting.

 

In the morning, after changing to a clean shirt from Sherlock’s luggage, he grimaces at the smell of tea on the shirt he is supposed to meet the French ambassador in. But he says nothing, of course he doesn’t. Sherlock is broken down as it is.

Perhaps the ambassador likes blueberries.

 

 

\\\

When it is all finished, after he has done everything he possibly can to keep Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and John safe from Moriarty’s underlings, he texts Mycroft to pick him up from the five-star hotel room where the occupant lies in a puddle of his own blood next to the shattered 1000£ glass table and enough evidence on and under him and in his luggage to connect him to the Moriarty case and name him the head of his security.

Sherlock has the energy to send his brother two letters ( _ok_ ) before he crashes on the bed, ruining the silk with the mud on his coat and shoes. He doesn’t care, and neither will Mycroft who is on his way to pay the bill and collect the stiff whose bodily fluids are slowly soaking the cream carpet beyond repair.

Sherlock is feeling slightly feverish, or maybe that’s just the spinning realisation that three years of hunting is over and he can once again start to think about the one place he has not allowed himself to think in three years, where the one person he has not stopped thinking about for a second is still sitting in his armchair, doing the crossword puzzle and drinking his tea.

Of course John is not there. 221B has been rented out, although to people who Mycroft hired to keep Mrs Hudson from giving the flat to outsiders and who will move out the moment Mycroft gives the word. John is not there, he is not waiting for Sherlock to return.

And yet, and yet.

Just before he falls asleep, Sherlock feels the warm hand on his shoulder again.

_'Come home to me.’_

 

 

\\\

Press play.

 

 

\\\

He is in London, in Westminster, at the door of another grubby little bedsit, opening the door, and John kisses him, then punches his cheekbones so that he falls to the floor. John kisses him on the cheekbones, then punches him on the jaw. John kisses his jaw, his eyelids, his nose, his ears, and doesn’t punch any of them.

_Things that are good: John’s tears when he is lying on top of me and kissing my eyebrows so that the tears fall into my mouth._

But tears are supposed to be bad.

“They are called happy tears, Sherlock.”

 

 

Inside he feels something similar to a Mentos being dropped into a litre and a half bottle of Coke – a bucket – a bathtub. There is no area wide enough or mint-flavoured sweets packs big enough to compare to the bubbling and welling inside him. He feels like the 60s songs Mycroft used to teach him how to dance to when he was three, like that exceedingly hot summer in Mexico when he was sixteen, like cotton candy and popcorn at a theme park all at once, like being in love.

 

 

\\\

It is never easy, the endings. Sherlock knows it now. Endings where you have to leave everything you care about, the only person you love behind, even if it means saving their lives. Endings where he never gets over the pain because every second he continues to live hurts.

But he could have this, a happy ending. He has already had to live through the sad one, make John live through it as well. They have suffered enough.

It could have gone horribly wrong, he realises later. It could have ended with the punch, it could have ended with John leaving him for good and never looking back.

But it ends with John smiling across the room, looking at him and only at him. It ends with John laid bare in Sherlock’s bed, all the joy, all the pain, all the scars, all the perfections showing.

Staring at John’s shoulder, Sherlock realises John never actually told him how he got shot. It is wonderful, that something so horrible brought John to him. Dipping his nose into the notch between John’s clavicles (John sighs, guttural and deep) he goes through all the good things he can add to his list by saying them out loud into John’s skin. Staring into his eyes (John chuckles softly, slightly uncomfortable, but flattered by the attention), finally able to categorise the exact blue of them, he takes a pen and writes it down in big, bold letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a final note, the name and chapter titles come from the Radiohead song _There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)_. I was having a good summer, listening to Thom Yorke's vocals and thinking "Yes, I shall write a fanfic on this." This was almost two years ago.


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